Haiku (13 page)

“So, Michael?” I asked.

Michael got to his feet. Then he raised his hand, volunteering for the mission.

“That’s the man,” Ranger said, driving a fist into his own palm.

“Even if for the best of causes, theft is theft,” I later told Lamont. Our band had gone their separate ways, except, this time, Lamont had chosen to accompany me from the first step. Target followed along.

“I ever say it wasn’t?” he countered. “All I’m saying is, if we don’t come up with the coin, that boy Brewster
is
gonna get himself a gun. You know it same as I do. That look. He
needs
those books, Ho.

“Maybe the kid’s no stick-up artist, but he’s just like those punks you see out there every day. All
they
see is gold chains and a tricked-out Escalade, women dangling all over them like they rock stars. And you can’t be in the dope game without shooters on your payroll.”

“How is Brewster like those you describe?”

“He’s
exactly
the same, Ho. They both sing the same song. The one every gang kid knows by heart: ‘Don’t Mind Dyin’.’ And it don’t take long to find out if they lying.”

“I do not understand,” I acknowledged.

“Break it down for you, then,” Lamont said. “When you say you don’t mind dyin’, you saying you not scared of nothing, okay? You gonna
take
what you need, no matter what stands in your way. For me, when I was bopping, what you needed was ‘respect,’” he said, the last word heavily laced with sarcasm bordering on disgust. “For some, that’s still it. But most of these young boys today, what they want is cash. Big cash. That’s what they get paid for, that rep. You know, if this guy says he’s going to take someone out, he’s either gonna do it or die trying, see?”

“And so for Brewster—”

“It’s his books,” Lamont finished for me. “But, in his head, he’s hearing that same song. And I’m telling you, Ho, we don’t figure out a way, that kid, he
is
gonna die trying.”

“So a theft to save a life …?”

“Yeah. Look, somebody
will
sell that boy a gun, and if he ever has to
shoot
it …”

“Boot! Loot! Hoot! Shoot!” Target clanged.

Lamont and I were struck by the same thought, as if by the same bolt of lightning. I could read on his face what was flashing in my mind. Which word would send Target off was never known in advance, but his pattern had never varied. Four words, each more or less rhyming with the original trigger, but absolutely
never
repeating the trigger word itself. And yet …

“Mother fucker!” Lamont said.

I understood the division into separate words of what would usually be a single vile epithet to be an expression of shock. I bowed my agreement.

We both looked at Target. Instead of the near-tranquillity into which he always lapsed after an outburst—as if a painful boil had been lanced—Target appeared disturbed, in some way. He was not agitated, nor did he appear to be bristling with tension. If anything, he looked like a man standing in the shade of a tree who could not understand why this gave him no relief from the sun.

Lamont gestured as if he was shaking dice in his right hand. He looked a question at me. I nodded.

“Some people, you put a gun in their hands, you know, sooner or later, they’re going to shoot.”

“Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!” Target erupted.

I searched my mind for a related word that would evoke his clanging. “So it is
the gun
, then?” I asked Lamont.

Target did not react verbally. But his posture slumped, as if a weighty depression was imposing itself. It was then I realized that his first attempt at direct communication had drained him dry.

“Come,” I said to them.

Target was silent throughout our walk. Lamont and I had made sure of this by not uttering a word. Target never initiates speech; he only reacts to it.

Still, before today, he had never …

We reached the alley behind Brewster’s building. I squatted, my back to the wall but not touching it. Lamont did the same, but leaned against the brick. Target squatted as I did. I had long since noted his ability to assimilate kinetic instruction, be it the simpler positional exercises or reverse breathing. He would have made a superb martial artist, I believe. But teaching him even the most rudimentary offensive moves would have been wrong—self-control is the foundational requirement for such knowledge.

“Try again,” I said to Lamont, who was unscrewing the cap of whatever bottle he held in a brown paper bag.

Lamont took a short drink, then offered the bag to me. I bowed slightly and shook my head, thus politely declining his generosity. Lamont next offered his bag to Target, who imitated my polite bow and refusal—as we knew he would.

Lamont, had he been alone with Target, would never have offered to share. Not because he was selfish, or out of a lack of respect. Lamont would not give alcohol to Target for the same reason I would not teach him techniques that might cause great injury to others.

“Man’s on another planet already,” Lamont had once told me. “Get some booze in his blood, who knows
what
he’d do?”

This was not a risk
any
of us would undertake.

Lamont took another drink, recapped the bottle, closed the paper bag, and nodded, as if confirming a long-held suspicion. He took a single cigarette from his coat, examined it for a moment, then lit it. After one prolonged draw, he passed it to me. I repeated my respectful declining of his offer, as did Target.

“Reminds me of being back on the yard,” Lamont said, in a reflective tone. “We’d squat down, just like this, back to the wall, have a smoke, and just shoot the breeze.”

Target did not react.

“Is that a prison expression, ‘shoot’?” I asked.

“No, bro. It just means talking to pass the time. When you’re Inside, anything you can do to kill time is good. I mean, the time is always there, right? It’s not like you could actually
shoot
it or anything.”

Target abandoned his correct posture to sit directly on the concrete. His head lolled forward.

“This ain’t gettin’ it done,” Lamont said. Unnecessarily.

I reached over and took Target’s hand. He accepted my grip, but did not return it. I extended my other hand to Lamont, who grasped it firmly.

“Hai!”
I barked.

Target looked up and saw the three of us, linked.

“Come,” I said, then drew in the deepest breath, expanding my stomach as I did so. Feeling Lamont and Target beginning to connect, I exhaled through my nose, contracting my stomach as if expelling toxins. I repeated this until I could feel the others leave on their own journeys.

Where they went, I cannot know. I went … searching.

I shifted my grip so that I could measure Target’s pulse. He had reached a state of deep calmness.

I brushed a nerve juncture in his wrist. Very lightly, but enough to send an electrical signal.

With my other hand, I simply squeezed.

When Target was looking directly at me, I stood up, bringing him and Lamont along with me.

“Shoot?” I said to Target.

“Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”

“Show us,” I half-commanded, half-pleaded, pointing to myself and Lamont.

Target blinked rapidly. His eyes seemed to change color, moving from dark blue to a much paler shade, as if the blinking were some form of rheostat.

“Shoot?” I prompted.

Target’s entire body shook. His face glistened with sweat. A vein throbbed in his temple. He was a warrior in battle, against an enemy only he could see.

Slowly, he staggered forward and turned to face me, each movement clearly causing him great pain.

Target stood valiantly, his left hand over his stomach, covered by his right. Again, his body reacted to whatever shock waves were assailing him. Tendons showed in his neck. His teeth ground together.

“Shoot?” I asked, again.

Target sucked air through his nose, held it, then exhaled in the same burst. He knife-edged his right hand, then brought it up to his left eyebrow, as if saluting. He held that position, knees wobbling.

I saw it then.

“Chute?” I said to Target. “We could slide Brewster’s books down a chute?”

Target fainted.

Lamont departed so hastily that he left his bag-wrapped bottle behind. I covered Target with my coat. Lamont quickly returned with a cardboard container of soup. As Target regained consciousness, I fed him sips of the soup until color returned to his face. With slight assistance, Target was able to sit up and finish the soup on his own.

“So, when my man sounds like he’s repeating the exact word that pops his cork, he’s using a homonym,” Lamont said, in a hushed, awed voice.

“Homonym?”

“That’s a word that
sounds
the same but has more than one meaning,” Lamont explained. “You have to get that from the context. Like, if I just say the word ‘pair,’ you might think I was talking about two of something. But if you saw me pointing at a piece of fruit, you’d know right away what I meant. Yeah?”

“I believe so,” I said, still not entirely certain. “Would an example be ‘I’ as in myself, and ‘eye’ for what I see
with?”

“Perfect!”

“And ‘whine’ as in ‘complain,’ rather than ‘wine’ as in a beverage?”

“You some piece of work, old man,” Lamont said, grinning broadly.

By late afternoon, Target was back to himself. He gave no indication that he was aware of any of the events that had transpired in his absence.

I could see that Lamont was barely able to suppress his desire to discuss the meaning of Target’s communications, but he realized that it was no longer safe to assume Target could not comprehend the speech of others.

The next morning, however, before we could have any such opportunity, we came under attack from an entirely unexpected source.

“What do you call
this
, Ho?” Michael almost shouted, waving what appeared to be a large amount of money in his hand.

When I did not respond, Michael spoke so rapidly that each word was sent crashing into the one to follow. “Yesterday, I saw this race on the card at Yonkers. Aged pacing mares. I didn’t need the form. I knew every single one of those girls from when they were fillies. When I saw they had Waspwaist down at thirty-to-one, I couldn’t believe it! Maybe she’s had trouble lately, I don’t know. But when she’s right, she’s a total fucking monster! We only had a couple of hours to get the fourteen bucks, but we pulled it off. And
look!”

This will never stop
, I thought, despairingly. Just as Lamont was using Brewster’s need for money as an excuse to return to crime, Michael had found what he would call a “loophole” allowing him to return to gambling. Michael had spread his disease by apparently convincing Ranger that they had a “mission” to obtain a certain sum of money, and I did not wish to contemplate the consequences of this deception.

Worst of all, Michael had apparently won. As Lamont had once explained to me, “A junkie gets locked up on some bullshit beef, okay? Sits maybe thirty days. Thing is, he goes
in with a heavy habit, and he comes out clean. Know what happens next? He goes right out and gets himself fixed up. And
that
hit, it’s like the first time all over again. Man goes in carrying a ten-bag habit—he needs that much just to keep from being sick, probably doesn’t even get him a real high. But when he’s clean, one bag will send him to Venus, see?”

“But why would—?”

“Because he
wants
to get to Venus, bro. ’Cause he’s
been
there, and he likes it. Look at Michael. Think that fool would have ever picked up his habit if he hadn’t
won?
That’s what sets the hook so deep, that feeling you get when it comes. I guaran-fucking-tee you, if Michael had put down a few bets and lost every one, he never gets his nose opened. Every degenerate gambler, he’s chasing that big win
again
. See, you can’t miss a place unless you been there.”

As Lamont’s words ribboned through my mind, I literally watched suicidal depression assume human form. It stood before me, leering. My brother’s mortal enemy had boldly stepped forth from its hiding place within him, bristling with confidence.

My reaction was not strategic but reflexive. “Why did you need fourteen dollars?” I asked Michael, giving myself a few precious seconds to study my opponent before we did battle.

“I
had
the winner, Ho. But what good is that if I can’t capitalize? So I needed to wheel her on top in the exacta.”

My blank-faced expression was not to buy time—Michael had switched to a language foreign to me. He noticed this at once, and realized an explanation was required: “An exacta, it’s just what it sounds like, Ho. You have to get the
horse that comes in first
and
the one that comes in second,
exactly
in that order, okay? There’s eight horses going. So with seven bets, we
guarantee
that, if our horse wins, we cash, no matter which of the rest comes in second.”

“Ah.”

“Naturally, the goddamned chalk comes second,” Michael said, as if he had been cheated out of something rightfully his. “But we still cashed good. Five hundred and seventy-one dollars and forty cents, Ho.”

“It is not nearly—”

“That’s my point! But now, with this kind of stake, I can parlay it into—”

“Michael …” I said. My voice trailed off into helplessness, as I realized I was no match for the opponent sneering at me from within my friend.

Lamont immediately stepped into the fray. “That is totally fucked, bro!” Catching Ranger’s eye, Lamont drew him into the fight: “That’s not the mission, man. That’s just your jones kicking in.”

“No!” Michael said, angrily. “I mean, we
need
money to move Brewster’s library, am I right?”

“Sure you are,” Lamont answered, still looking at Ranger. “And what you scored is exactly what we need for
supplies
. We need
gear
to pull this off, and you just won us enough to—”

“Restock!” Ranger cut him off.