Psycho Save Us (2 page)

Another tug at
her arm interrupted the vision, and Kaley did nothing more than shiver.  Almost
at once she had rewritten the future memory as nothing more than a combination
of Big Sister’s Paranoia and a cold wind, one born on a late-night stroll down
an empty street that she walked with her litter sister, whom she had always
tried to protect from everyone.  Including Mom.

“I said,
slow
down
!” Kaley said.  This time, she yanked back on Shannon’s arm, pulling
the reins back on this little horsey.  “Listen to me!  Stop!  Okay?  Just stop
it.”

“I wanna run
faster!  It’s not
fair
!” she pouted.

Shannon had
entered the stage now where nothing was fair.  It ended every sentence where
she was arguing to get her way.

“We
can play White Ninjas, but we have to be quiet—”

“There’s only
one
White Ninja, and I’m it!  You’re Pan Lei!  Remember?”

“I remember,”
she sighed.  Pan Lei was the name of one of the White Ninja’s few allies, a
kung fu master who ran the White Lotus Clan.  He was supposed to be a gifted
kung fu man whose powers were undefeatable, or some such.  “You’re a
ninja
,
though, remember?  If you’re too loud, you might alert the guards, and they’ll
tell Oni.”  Oni was the villain in two of the White Ninja films, a tattooed fat
man who juggled several nefarious schemes at once.  “Now, you gonna be quiet?”

“Yeah, yeah,
yeah,” said her little sister dismissively.  But she obeyed now, and moved in
low a crouch, creeping along with one hand out, staying brave as long as the
other hand maintained the Anchor.

Kaley made sure
each time they crossed a street, she made Shannon look right, then left, then
right again.  A single car drove past them, headed in the same direction they
were going.  It was a black Toyota Tacoma.  Kaley knew because she was getting
into cars, a hobby that so far hadn’t extended any further than just reading
about them and dreaming of her first car, but still made her a sharp eye for
years, makes, and models.  This one was a 2008 or 2009 TRD, and she marked it
as strange immediately because she had never seen it around her neighborhood
before, and there was never any reason for anyone new to visit her neighborhood
at all.

Kaley held no
illusions about where on Earth she lived.  A decrepit neighborhood in the
middle of Atlanta, one filled with apartments and townhouses for rent and
nothing of real worth.  She had seen enough reruns of shows like
Modern
Family
and
Family Matters
to know that whatever was normal for the
rest of America wasn’t normal for her.  She’d never seen a sitcom depicting
even one motherly figure that enjoyed crystal meth.  And everyone on TV had a
car, no matter how broken down—Kaley, her sister and their mother all took the
bus.  In this neighborhood, cars were little more than lawn decorations,
propped up by cinderblocks, or else missing some vital component that rendered
them inoperable.

But the Tacoma,
even in the dark it shined.  No scratches or detns, no screeching of metal on
metal as it rolled past.  The truck was around the corner and out of sight
within six seconds, and Kaley gave it no more thought.  Although, some part of
her
did
consider it.  It was the charm, of course.  She would come to
know that many years from now.  It revealed something to her.  A cocksure
smile, worn by a man she wouldn’t want to rescue her in a million years, but
one she would run to in time.

“Shhh,” Shannon
said.  “I think heard the guards.”

Kaley sighed. 
Still playing the game, she crept in behind the White Ninja, slinking along and
ducking from phantoms.

Dodson’s was two
blocks away from their house.  Just two blocks.  One day, when she went for her
criminology degree, Kaley would learn that most crimes, including kidnappings,
happened within a mile of the home.

The truck pulled
to a sudden stop.  The driver had just spotted the first lights on at an eatery
of some kind, and an open sign.  The first open sign for the last five miles or
so.  The hankering had come on him so abruptly his hands had started shaking on
the wheel. 
Or maybe that’s just yer conscience, Spence ol’ boy
, he mused,
smiling.  That was funny, because the docs at Leavenworth all said that he
didn’t have one.

He had parked
the truck at the curb, just beside Dodson’s Store.  A few of the letters
weren’t lit up on the sign, so it looked like
D ds n’s St  e
.  He pulled
out a pack of Marlboros, one left by the owner of the truck.  He lit it,
inhaled gratefully, and exhaled just the same.  He glanced into the rearview
mirrors, gauging what sort of neighborhood he was in.

This was the
Bluff, notorious throughout Atlanta for being the hub of heroin, meth, cocaine
and prostitution.  It was bounded by Donald L. Hollowell Parkway to the north,
Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and the Atlanta University Center to the south,
Downtown Atlanta to the east and Joseph E. Lowry Boulevard to the west. 
Splitting her in half was Joseph E. Boone Boulevard, creating the two distinct
Neighborhoods of English Avenue to the north and Vine City to the south.

Up the street
was a car title pawn shop called Strike Gold, and standing on the street
outside of it were two young black boys, probably no older than fourteen. 
Spencer was sure they were holding.

On up the street
a ways was a pair of cars, one a red El Camino and the other a black
Expedition.  Spencer reassessed the set-up. 
Naw, the boys take the money,
the men in the cars are the one’s holdin’
. 
They drive up, drop a bag,
probably some fake shit made out of baby powder and mixed with Clorox to smell
.

Spencer smiled
and took another toke.  It was funny how the game never changed, no matter
where one went in the wide world.  Baton Rouge, Biloxi, Leavenworth, Atlanta,
all the same.  He wondered who it was that had first thought of recruiting kids
to hang out on corners while the adults hung back, too afraid to reveal
themselves to the cops who no doubt patrolled this area with the occasional
undercover sting.  Whoever thought up recruiting kids was a fucking genius.

He glanced up
through the windshield when he spotted a helicopter swooping by, its
searchlight flashing down.  It was nowhere near him, but he stopped smoking for
a moment, wondering, as he had for the last five hundred miles,
They lookin’
for me?
  He’d been very careful, using any back roads he could find on the
GPS and changing cars every fifty miles or so.

When the
helicopter moved on further west, Spencer leaned back and relaxed a bit.  He
took a few more tokes, glancing at the closed car wash across the street.  Next
to that was a closed tanning salon.  Next to that was a gas station, closed at
these hours, but a sign out front still declared in bold red neon letters
LOTTERY TIX SOLD
HERE
.

Standing just outside
Dodson’s Store were four young men.  Black men. 
Niggers
. 
A nigger
neighborhood
. 
What did I expect?
  This was Atlanta, after all. 
Though his work had often taken him to places like this, Spencer typically
proscribed such areas.  He supposed even traveling salesmen had to get used to
life on the road, and nurses had to get used to looking at blood and piss and
shit.  Every job had its drawback.

Spencer hopped
out of the truck and locked it behind him, marking the look that the four black
men were giving him and the truck as he stepped inside.  “S’up, fellas?” he
said.  Conversation, hitherto clandestine but active, now ceased.  Though they
had been gazing at him in his truck with indolent eyes, there was a degree of
intelligence in them—predatory intelligence, but intelligence just the same.  They
had made sure he saw them, so he made sure they knew he saw
them
. 

He stepped
inside, a jingling bell over his head had the musical accompaniment of Akon,
saying he would “smack that.”  A waft of half-cooked meat met him, as well.  Dodson’s
was part convenience store, part burger joint, it seemed. 
Leave it to a
nigger neighborhood to create such a nonsensical amalgam
, he thought.  The
word “amalgam” came to mind courtesy of the Leavenworth Rehabilitation Program. 
In the reading portion, Spencer had excelled at remembering the word of the day
and its meaning. 
You’re a gifted reader, Spence
, Dr. McCulloch had told
him.  If Spencer recalled correctly, he had replied,
You’re a good bullshitter,
doc
.

Sad about
McCulloch.  Not a bad fellow, him.

The wall to his
immediate left had a single stand full of books—romance and erotica novels with
black people on the front, some
Penthouse
magazines with a dubious dash
of Tom Clancy peeking out here and there.  A spill on aisle three hadn’t been
cleaned up.  Wires hung from the paneled ceiling.

“S’up, yo?” said
a man behind the counter, satisfying his Pavlovian response to hearing the bell
jingle over the door by tossing out the greeting.  He was a tall, corpulent
fellow, nearly as wide as the stolen Toyota truck parked outside.  He had
cornrows pulled back over his head, two of them sticking up like strays, though
Spencer was pretty sure they were meant to be that way. 
A nigger style if I
ever saw one
.  He wore a
faux
-classic #7 Michael Vick jersey, a
black one from back when the man played for the Falcons.

I could pitch
that shirt for a tent
,
Spencer thought.  He fought the smile from his face and said, “Burger?”

“Fuh sho,” said
Fattie, and waddled away.  He made it over to a table behind the counter, his
ass bumping up against a few shelves holding an odd array of
TV Guides
,
Vibe
magazines, burger condiments and a copy of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, opened and
facedown.  His feet stuck to the floor, an indication of many spills that were
never quite cleaned.  There were stains on the walls and around the sandwich
area, all of which Spencer regarded with a degree of humor. 
If I was in the
joint, I would be eatin’ better than this
.  It was true.  Leavenworth
wasn’t so bad.  At least, not when it came to lunchtime.

Fattie had the
good habit of pulling on plastic gloves, but that’s where the professional
etiquette ended.  He reached over to the grill and lifted a meat patty with his
hands, no tongs.  He then opened up a plastic Sunbeam bag, and started pulling
out sandwich bread.

“Regular
sandwich bread?” Spencer asked.

“Yeah.  Why? 
Problem?”

“What, ya don’t
have any hamburger buns?”

“Like what?”

“Whattaya mean,
‘like what’?  Like hamburger buns…never mind,” he said, and lifted the
cigarette to his lips.

“Yo, dude, you
can’t smoke in here.”

Spencer smirked,
looking around at the counter that wouldn’t pass a health inspection by the
Tasmanian Devil.  “You serious, fat man?”

At this, Michael
Vick’s last fan in Atlanta tilted his head, half in sarcasm, and half in a
challenge.

“A’right,
a’right.”  Spencer crushed the cig in his hand and put it in his pocket.

“Ya better
believe, ‘a’right’.  I may not look like it but I can jump across this counter
an’ whoop that ass.”

 “Before you do,
would you mind telling me where I can find Pat’s Auto?”

Here, the fat
man looked up at him, halfway through placing the patty on the sandwich bread. 
Spencer thought,
I came to the right place
. 
He knows
.  Very
quickly, the fat man went back to fixing the burger.  “He up on Terrell Street. 
Closed right now, though.  Most o’ his folk got locked up, fuh real.”

“That’s what I
heard,” Spencer said.

“Whatchoo want
on this muthafucka?”

“Oh, uh, cheese,
mayo, mustard, ketchup, onions, pickles.  Everything you got except lettuce and
tomato.”

“Er’thing but
the healthy shit, huh?”

“You’d know all
about healthy eating, I guess?”

“I dun tol’ you to
watch that shit,” he said with a touch of asperity.

Spencer smiled. 
He liked this fat fuck.  “Yeah, everything but the healthy shit.  Does that
come with fries an’ a drink?”

“Does this look
like a goddam McDonald’s?”

Spencer laughed
now.  He nodded.  “Then I guess that’ll cost me more than a Big Mac meal, eh?” 
The fat man nodded wordlessly and went about finishing off the sandwich,
slinging the pieces together without the affection he would have shown his own
sandwich.  Spencer glanced outside, noting the four black men hadn’t moved.  He
looked back at the fat man.  “What’s your name?”

“We makin’
friends now?” he asked, tossing Spencer’s burger into a translucent plastic
wrapper.

“Just curious
what’cher name is, friend.”  Behind him, a door opened, and he heard someone
enter and whisper.  His natural instincts caused him to look, and saw two black
girls walk in; one was no older than eight, the other not quite a teenager. 
The smallest was in blue jeans and a blue shirt with Jimmy Hendrix on the
front, and the oldest (holding the little one’s hand tightly) wore blue jeans
with a green sweater.  Both had cornrows with pigtails.  The oldest girl paused
in the doorway.  No, froze.  She froze there, looking at Spencer.  He stared
back at her, wondering if he knew her.  She certainly looked astonished for a
moment. 
Probably never seen a white man around here before
, he thought,
smiling back at her.