Team Seven (26 page)

As the trolley pulled up Beezy yelled, “I’m telling Smoke, nigga. You watch.” He kept repeating it. I turned around and looked at them both. Tunnetta was pink-faced and puffy-eyed and Beezy’s left eye was already starting to swell. Aldrich stood next to me waiting for the trolley, breathing all heavy, saying, “Dawg, what happened back there?” The trolley stopped and the doors dinged open and the people flooded out. Tunnetta screamed, “Gimme my phone!” and I pushed past Aldrich, got on the trolley, and took a seat. The doors closed and the trolley’s engine revved up and the driver rang the bell. As we pulled off I took one last glance at the three of them looking like bums in the station, Beezy and Tunnetta sitting on a bench and Aldrich at the edge of the platform screaming, “Where you going?”

I sat up and looked forward as the trees canopied overhead and cast a green darkness on the trolley. I didn’t answer
him because I didn’t know the answers myself. I had no idea where I was going or what happened back there. I thought hitting Beezy would have felt different. For as long as I’d wanted to slug him for all those times he gave me that grin and all the times he tried to style on me with Tunnetta, I didn’t feel too much better. It felt like I jammed every single joint on my right hand. When I saw Beezy struggling with Tunnetta in the train station and heard her scream, I felt like a monster.

I’d also never felt more alone. Beezy knows better than to jump up in my face like an idiot. There’s no way I could show my face inside that Bible study now. I just wanted to go somewhere and smoke some bud—someplace where nobody knew anything about me, not even my name. The last thing I heard Aldrich yell before the trolley got completely out of the station was, “Man … Dre! What am I supposed to tell your mama?” He was asking all the right questions. I just didn’t have answers. Big vines, shrubs, and weeds overgrew the rusty metal fence running alongside the track. The driver touched the brakes and the trolley’s wheels screeched a hiss of metal kissing metal.

The driver slowed down and rolled through the Capen Street stop, a request-only stop. As we picked up speed it sounded like the power went out or something. There was this stillness in the car. Nobody was talking louder than a whisper and for some reason as I sat breathing the musty trolley air it felt like someone had just died. Everybody looked tired, defeated, and unfriendly, like they’d really rather be elsewhere.

Someone pulled the line to request a stop and I flinched when I heard the ringer go off. I squeezed Tunnetta’s cell phone with my right hand and it felt like a bunch of little needles were rolling around inside my knuckles. I tucked
my hurt hand in my lap as the trolley powered down and we swayed into the Valley Road stop.

I kept flexing my hand and balling it into a fist, but the pain only got worse and my wrist felt stiffer. I started trying to figure out how to work Tunnetta’s phone so I could read her text messages when an old brass-skinned coolie man limped up to me with his cane and stopped. He smelled like something fried and curried with a hint of mothballs and I looked away, but he tapped my shoulder.

“Can I beg you a seat, my youth?”

I didn’t answer him, I just stood up and let the little man into the seat beside me. I heard a loud sports muffler burn rubber and a car cut off the trolley as we began to pull out into the busy intersection on Central Avenue and Eliot Street. The trolley driver tooted his horn and pumped the brakes, and the whole car stutter-stepped and everyone jolted forward. I reached for the bar on the chair in front of me but I grabbed with my hurt hand and lost my grip. My weight shifted and I wobbled onto the old brass-skinned white-haired coolie man sitting next to me. The old man’s cane clacked against the wall and then he sighed like I’d crushed all the wind out of him.

The trolley straightened out and I still had my arm snugged around the old man’s shoulder as I regained my balance. I looked down at his little trembling body and I held the man’s bony frame still, like I was steadying a bag of golf clubs.

“Sorry, sir,” I said, looking down at all the sharp silvery white hair growing out of the old man’s ears. He flapped his elbows and slithered out of my grip and gave me a strange look, like I was trying to do something funny to him. He looked me off and cleared his throat as he shrugged his shoulder, tossing up a hand to acknowledge my apology. Tunnetta’s
phone vibrated in my lap and I used my good hand to click open a new text message from Beezy.

I closed the text message.

I looked across the trolley at a woman with bald-headed twins sitting on her lap. They were both letting out the sound of pure baby joy. They weren’t angry or tired, they were both intrigued, the boy trying to steal the keys from his mother’s red leather purse and the little girl completely consumed with trying to get the cap off of her mother’s green bottle of Mountain Dew. Both of their big bald doughy heads bobbled in different directions as we trolley-chugged along. They looked at each other as they played, almost like they were racing to something, but it was a friendly race because they were giggling with their unformed wiggly slack baby smiles.

The phone vibrated again, and again it was Beezy.

At first I chuckled ’cause he called me a dickface. Who says that? Beezy’s always been a clown, since we was kids. But Smoke’s a live wire, and then I thought the only reason Beezy be acting tough is ’cause this only pours fuel on the fire I already had with Smoke.

As the trolley rolled along I looked out at the thick patches of pine trees whizzing past in the window and I sat wondering to myself, What would Reggie do? Reggie’s the realest cat
I know. He always has the right answers even when I don’t want to hear them. He always holds me down. He could’ve tripped on me ’bout how I starting dealing with Smoke before him, but instead he held me down and blew a cloud of smoke in my face and said, “Hardheaded niggas learn the hard way,” and he tossed me the product.

The driver rang the bell and the overhead speakers scratched and squealed PA fuzz as the driver announced, “Butler station. Please exit to the right.”

The trolley doors stayed open, letting in all the hot air as the trolley driver got out to help an old man get his wheelchair onto the handicap lift. I watched the overweight white man slowly rise into the car. The trolley began to vibrate as we pulled away from the Butler Street stop. I’d seen the cemetery on the trolley ride between Butler and the Cedar Grove stop before, but now it gave me a bad feeling as I looked at all them tombstones.

We pulled into Cedar Grove and the trolley idled a second without the doors opening. The trolley’s engine let out a big sneeze and then the doors opened. I don’t know how the fuck he’d pulled it off, but when them doors opened I saw Beezy standing there with his swollen eye turning all kinds of weird colors. He was standing next to Smoke. His boy Kendrick and Tunnetta and Aldrich were all standing there behind them.

There was no games. It was straight business. Smoke hopped up in the doorway of the trolley and looked at me like we’d never met. I flinched back against my chair and looked side to side. There was nowhere to go. I caught eyes with the old man sitting next to me, and he shifted his body away from me and looked out the window, two hands on his cane.

“If you wanted trouble you picked the right one, playa. Bring yo dumb ass on.” Smoke flashed me an evil smile and
motioned his arm out the door as he stepped up into the car. I looked at the woman holding the twins and in her eyes I saw fear. The boy and the little girl were now both playing tug-of-war with her keys that had been pulled from her purse. I could tell she was scared for me and she was scared for her babies. She kept sneaking glances at me and Smoke. He jumped into a defensive stance and said, “You gonna run? Motherfucker, you think shit’s sweet. Fucking bitches in other niggas’ beds? Playing a nigga like you don’t owe me?” He motioned out the door.

His hands were shaking, but I don’t think he was nervous. He stood there and I sat looking at his shaking hands and I didn’t answer him. The baby boy was laughing with the set of keys in his hand while the baby girl was deep in a cry. The mother grabbed the boy’s chubby cheeks and said, “Listen, everything is not yours. You need to share.”

I was caught, there was nothing to say, no way to escape. Smoke stepped toward me and knelt down so we were eye level as I sat. He looked me in the face, elbowed me in the mouth, and snatched me up out of my seat by the collar and walked me down off the trolley. As he did, the crying baby pointed at us and screamed out. The mother snatched the keys from the baby boy.

The doors closed. The trolley pulled off.

Smoke pushed me into the back of his boy Kendrick’s gold Chevy Caprice. Beezy was in the back with me and Smoke. Tunnetta and Aldrich were up front with Kendrick, looking scared as shit. There was no music playing, all I could hear was the car squeaking with the bumps and turns in the road and an occasional siren. Nobody said anything. I could feel the sting from my busted lip and Smoke kept his arm around me like we were buddies. Beezy kept smiling at me with his
bubbled-up eye, looking proud of himself, like I wouldn’t slump his punk ass again if Smoke wasn’t breathing down my neck. Tunnetta looked at us in the rearview mirror and this was when Beezy started to get cute.

“Fuck you looking at, nigga?”

Then Beezy cocked his fist and punched me right in the eye.

“Sucker!” He laughed and smacked me again in the back of the head. I lunged at him and Smoke tightened his grip and laughed, “I wouldn’t do that.”

I looked at Aldrich and he looked like he wanted to cry as we pulled into the parking lot of Kelly Field and Kendrick tossed the car into park. We all got out and started walking off and once we made it behind the track, I knew they were taking me into the woods. I wanted to shit myself or scream out for someone to help me, but I didn’t. In a weird way I felt a certain peace about being in no-man’s-land as we walked into the brush. We followed a hiking trail until we made it onto a clearing and we all stopped. Smoke pushed me and I stumbled but kept my balance. I turned around and everything went Christmas Eve silent as everyone scattered away from me. I looked at Smoke and he had his pistol pointed right at me. I felt lightning in my blood. I couldn’t run or do anything. All I said was, “I got your money. If you just take me home I can give you your money.”

Smoke shook his head. “I’da took the money a while ago, but that’s before you decided to fuck a bitch in my bed, lose my money on some ol’ humbug shit, then punch my brother. Nigga, I oughta shoot your stupid ass.”

I farted a few times as I stood there and everyone else tried not to call attention to themselves. Smoke lowered the pistol and jogged at me and all I remember was seeing him swing and a flash of blue steel, I felt a sharp thump and everything
went dark. I opened my eyes and I was down on the ground and I was leaking blood from somewhere on my face. Tunnetta was screaming and I heard Smoke yell, “Shut that bitch the fuck up.”

I saw Aldrich’s black Adidas try to run away, but Kendrick grabbed him. He said, “Slow down, brah, we ’bout to dip,” and Aldrich didn’t try to fight him at all.

A black and a blue pair of Timberlands walked toward me and I looked up a bit. It was Beezy and Smoke. Beezy leaned down and started patting at my pockets. I rolled over and put my bloody hands out in front of me. Then Smoke kicked me in the ribs.

“Move and I’ll pistol-whip ya ass again. Say anything. Say one motherfucking word about this and I’ll fucking kill you. I try to put you on. Teach you some game and this is how you cut. You lucky today, I’m feeling led by God’s shining light. I’m ’bout to hit Bible study, nigga. Mama can’t always save ya lil’ ass.”

He kicked me again, and then Kendrick grabbed Tunnetta, who wouldn’t stop screaming, and started walking her and Aldrich back toward the car. I swung my arms trying to fight, but I felt like I was underwater and I wasn’t moving fast enough. Beezy found the weed in my sock as Smoke took out a joint of his own and sparked it. Beezy handed my weed to Smoke and Smoke said, “Oh, you got work now? Guess we’ll call it even then, buster. See ya at Bible study.”

Smoke and Beezy walked back toward the car and I stayed on the ground. It felt safer there. I closed my eyes and heard footsteps again. I looked, and it was Beezy patting me down.

“And gimme my girl’s phone.”

Again, I stayed down.

It was just my luck to stumble out of the woods and see
Reggie shooting around at the basketball courts as I tried to regain my balance. He was the only person I wanted to see until I actually saw him. I had dirt all over me. My face got hot and I put my head down and limped toward the courts. All bloodied up like I was, there was no way of denying something had just happened to me, but I didn’t feel like explaining myself. My right hand felt full of loose glass shards. The skin under my left eye was puffy like a ketchup packet when I touched it and the swelling made it hard to see. My whole body felt road-rashed and everything was either tingling or warm and numb. The cut on my forehead was beginning to feel like a glob of Jell-O and the blowing wind made it sting. I glanced up at Reggie and he stared me down as I limped over, but he didn’t say anything. He met me at the picnic table and sat down across from me. Sweat-burning water ran from my eyes, but I wasn’t crying.

I sat sideways on the bench of the picnic table with my body facing the basketball courts away from Reggie. In the corner of my eye I could see the sides of his lips wiggling. I could see his bunched-up cheeks restraining that smile, that I-told-you-so expression. I looked down at the grass trying to stare at the brown dirt.

I tried to sneak a glance at him and he saw me and looked me off, shifting his gaze onto the empty basketball courts.

“So is that what’s been having you hiding out? An ass whooping? I just seen them all pull away. Might as well just come on with it.”