King's Justice: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 2 (16 page)

  "The thing about women is that we don't share. It's not in our nature," Omarosa said, her voice as clear and close as though she stood next to him. Its waters clear and deep, she glided across the surface of the lake. "I've spent a lifetime listening to men who seek prostitutes. Some blamed their wives for making them choose to spend their money to be with another. Others wept with guilt and shame, though that didn't stop them from having a head bob in their laps in car seat trysts. Others, in fits of machismo to mask their childishness, spoke in grandiose terms about their lives, bragged about themselves, wanting to be praised. Or they even turned violent. All to satisfy the demands of an ego to show they didn't actually need to pay for it."

  "I–"

  "A fierce battle, a war, wages within you. Greatness must be earned and not just by leaping to rescue every queen that comes along your path. This queen rescues herself." Omarosa turned on her heel, reducing the lake to little more than her personal catwalk. "Be careful when you help the women. Not all of them are damsels in distress. Most will take advantage of a young handsome knight."

  "What about you?"

  "I'll devour you." Her skin, slightly blue and puffy as if she'd been drowned, and long greenish hair, damp and drawn like seaweed. "I'll drag you straight into my underwater palace where my most prized knights await. And you, above all knights, should lead them."

  Lott sprang up from his pillow. Disoriented, it took him a few minutes to recognize the confines of his room. Then he fell back onto his pillow, knowing he wouldn't be drifting back to sleep. So began Lott's daily work of beating back the past, haunted by dreams. He'd managed to work out an arrangement with the manager of the Speedway Lodge, formerly a Howard Johnson's, where he stayed, offering onsite security now that he worked second shift at FedEx. This filled his nights and left the early hours of the morning for him to sleep. Or run around with King. All the better knowing what waited for him in his dreams.

  The 1950s-era lampshades cast the room with an orange pallor. All of his belongings fit into his backpack or a drawer so he could pick up to leave with no notice should life carry him elsewhere. His rootlessness matched his restless spirit. The dream stirred up something else. Or perhaps the fact that he slept in his brother's shirt stirred the dream.

  Lott stripped off the shirt, letting it catch on his shoulders, not admitting to not wanting to let him go. His brother, Morris. The shirt was a connection, though it had long lost any scent of him. It wasn't as if he had grown up laying awake at night one day hoping to work for FedEx (though he knew he couldn't be a UPS man in their shit-colored uniforms). In another life, Lott dreamt of being a rapper. Music filled his head and songs played in color. Rhythms and beats formed his skin, and spat lyrics formed his palette. Pouring out his soul in his music, it was easy to notice the laughter, if not the pain behind the song; easy to be caught up in the dance, behind the beat, with the anger which could be marketed. Exploited.

  
"All the neighbors said so." Lott knew her soliloquy by
heart and filled in the next bit, even matching the cadence of
her voice.

  
Her eyes narrowed to slits, the only warning, before she
sprang up and slapped him for the disrespect. If he knew
what was good for him, he would allow her her time, her
story, and her way of telling and he'd listen to every word of
it at her pace. The imprint of her hand stung his cheek.

  
"He had potential. Those fools he ran with… not two nick
els' worth of sense between the lot of them. But they were
drawn to my baby. My baby boy."

  
Morris was fourteen months younger than him.

  
Lott touched his face where the memory of pain lingered.
He braced himself for his mother's next words. "You and
your music are a complete waste of time, effort, energy, and
resources. What good did it do your brother? You let him
down. You let the whole family down. You had one simple
job. One damn thing I wanted you to do: look out for you
brother. Guard that spark. But… damn."

  
Now was that precarious time. She either found her way
into a bottle of something cheap to get her head up, or she'd
lash out, grabbing whatever was handy – broom, bottle, one
time the cast-iron frying pan – and slam it into Lott. It wasn't
his fault. He tried, he'd once tried to defend himself. That
was the last time he attempted to mount a defense. The frying
pan slammed into him with the force of a hurled brick.
Though maybe she'd spend the worst of this attack in her
slap, perhaps taking enough of the edge off so she wouldn't
explode. Knowing how not to catch the predator's attention,
Lott stirred from his seated position, on the love seat – the
threadbare material allowed the sharp corners of the couch
to scrape him – arms and legs untangling not too quickly to
draw undue attention, but with furious intent.

  
Not that he could point this out to his mother, but Morris
was always half a fool himself. Always running around
playing gangsta. At the ripe age of eleven…

  
… talking shit about jacking fools up and giving pay
backs. On one shoulder, a six-pointed star with the letters B,
G, D, and N in four of the points; on the other, two crossed
three-pronged pitchforks drawn in permanent marker. They
strolled through the parking garage next to Market Square
Arena. The lot mostly deserted, they trolled about for hood
ornaments to take off. The parking lot wound about, serpen
tine concrete walls little more than waist high. They often
spit on those coming up the lower levels when more people
were around.

  
"I'm straight up Black Gangsta Disciple." The words
echoed with a boom with the strange acoustics of the concrete
structure. He didn't notice the hard-faced diesel brothers up
the way behind him. Lott elbowed him in the side and ticked
his chin toward them, warning him to be easy. But he would
have none of it and didn't care that, too late, he had their
full attention.

  
"Da fuck? Say that shit again," a brickhouse of a brother
said. Wide as he was tall, a poorly grown goatee outlined lips,
his mouth as big as Lott's fist.

  
"He didn't say nothing," Lott stepped between them and
his brother.

  
"Wha? Nah, for real, what did he say?" the second one
said in a measured tone meant to convey calm and complete
reasonableness. Lott heard the echo of a snake's rattle in the
timbre of his voice.

  
"I ain't scared," Morris said. "My boys got my back. Black
Gangsta Disciples."

  
"Oh yeah? Spit your lit."

  
"What?" Morris asked.

  
"A prayer better come off your lips real soon, boy." The
first man crowded Morris, the other barring him from Lott.

  
"I don't…"

  
The two men caught each other's eyes and upended Morris
over the side of the parking garage. They each held fast to
a foot.

  
"Say that shit again," the first man demanded.

  
"Say it again and I will end you," the second man dared.

  
Morris thrashed about, the street loomed beneath him. Lott
punched at the two men. "Let him go!"

  
"Say that shit again. What set you claim?" the first asked
again, ignoring Lott's swats.

  
"Black Gangsta Disciple."

  
Moments.

  
The surreal passage of time, life-changing instants occur
with Lott frozen or with things moving so fast he couldn't
react. Lies clouded memories, all dark whispers unchecked as
guilt and shame longed to take root. Perhaps he sensed his
mother's favoritism and wished it extinguished. Perhaps the
need to finally be seen was born from wanting to see his
brother gone. Perhaps part of him resented his brother. Per
haps any of that held him to his spot.

  
The two brutes released him then leaned over the concrete
balcony further to better study the piece of street art they had
just created. Morris's cry unfroze Lott. He tore ass down the
main stairs. By the time he reached the ground level, a crowd
had already gathered. Starlings bobbed around it like curious
children, scattering at his approach. Morris's face was an ag
onal mask, lips drawn upward. A grotesque statue with his
arms rested at unnatural angles to the body. His jaws hinged.
The blood soaked his clothes black. Eyes open, fixed on…

  
… him, filled with rage and resentment. Nothing close to the
love one would expect from their move. Accusing, blame-riddled.

  
Lott didn't know what or how to feel.

 

  Sadly, it wasn't even the worst thing he'd seen in gangsta life. He studied the scars on his hands. Remembering how Lady G held his hand, ran her hands along them, he thought about how they matched. All their scars, they were a patchwork.

 

Prez sought out craziness. His dreams were all fat rolls of dollar bills, girls on each arm, and respect accorded from the neighborhood when he came through. The drugs gave him purpose and focus: get money, get high. Life was a simple equation. Yet nothing fixed that torn-up sense within him, nothing stitched together the fragments of himself he hadn't realized had been rent asunder. The abandonment of his father. The shunning by teachers. His mother's misplaced rage. The low value he placed on himself. Knowing the whys didn't help.

  Reduced to a collection of emaciated bones shrinkwrapped with grayish skin, Prez writhed in silent panic on the couch, the sheets kicked off and around his ankles. Wide-eyed disorientation and mouth half-opened in an unvoiced scream, he looked absolutely lost. Like he didn't know who he was, where he was, or how he got there. His arms flailed in sudden panic, attack, or defense landing weak punches. Then he pissed himself. Lacking the strength to put his foot back under the sheets, he never imagined himself sinking to such a point. Bitter. Broken. Hurting, too bad to see who he was or how he could live.

  No different than King, really, if King were truly honest with himself. Most of his days were like this, even if he gave no indication of it on the outside. This was his daily internal war.

  Mouth twitching, eyes jumpy, hands shaking, Prez was a ghost of the boy King had moved into Big Momma's house so many months ago, barely recognizable. The boy's feet drew King's attention. Both were ashy, but one was ragged and raw as if it had been caught in a food processor. King felt compelled to wash them. Getting a towel from his bathroom, he wiped the excrement from Prez's feet. During the best of times, Prez slept a lot during his detox. King had brought him back to his place, explaining to Lady G that he owed it to Prez. He never quite found the words to explain how he blamed himself for failing Prez as a friend and as an example. As a leader. That perhaps he could find redemption for them both if he could see Prez through this dark time. Walk beside him through the worst of it, even if it meant wiping shit from the boy's feet.

  His sheets soaked through, his pillow smelling of thick sweat and the bite of body odor, Prez's lucid dreams bubbled up, little more than memory fragments.

 

  
"How much you make on a package?" Prez asked,
slouched against the couch with warm butter coursing
through his brain.

  
"Why? You lookin'?" Naptown Red asked. He had once
waved a gun around in a misunderstanding with his live-in
girlfriend not too long ago. By all rights, po-po should've shot
him on the spot the way he was carrying on. Instead, the tale
growing with each re-telling, he found a measure of a repu
tation as six officers wrestled him to the ground. He was out
in less than a day.

  
"Maybe."

  
"So you want to get into dealing this nasty shit?" The two
passed the pipe back and forth. "It's one thing to dabble in
this shit on the side…"

  
"Recreational use and shit," Prez repeated from previous
schooling.