The Dying Ground (14 page)

I found her in Flea’s room curled up on the bed with her head buried in the pillows. I hated walking in there because the air was still charged with Flea’s favorite perfume.

“You okay?” I sat at the foot of the bed and held on to the four-poster like an anchor. I planted my feet to keep my equilibrium, remembering what it had been like to make love to her.

We’d both finished a late shift at the bar a week before she quit. Billy was out of town, and it was the anniversary of her mother’s death: a recipe for error. The two of us had just come home when she nonchalantly walked me into her bedroom. She gave me the go-ahead signal by allowing me to stay while she changed her clothes. I sat in a corner chair with the
remote control dangling in my hand. I tried to concentrate on the TV but all I could see was her soft brown skin stretched to nearly six feet. I knew her renewed interest wasn’t about me but it didn’t matter. Her loneliness rode the surface of her body like a second skin, but being a gentleman and being thoughtful had cost me her once. I wanted her back under any circumstances.

“What you looking at, Maceo?” She’d turned around to reveal a perfect breast.

“Nothing.” I dropped my head as desperate heat flooded my cheeks.

“Nothing,” she repeated, teasing me with a dead-on imitation of my voice. “You don’t see this?” She took my hand and placed it on her stomach. I held it there stiffly, afraid to move an inch.

She moved it for me. “You don’t see this either?” She guided my hand to her breast.

“What about this?” She dropped her skirt to the floor and stood naked before me. Then she bent to look me dead in the eye.

“Why you scared?” she teased playfully.

“Because.” I wanted to say, Because you’re gonna leave. Because there’s no way I could ever keep you. I kissed her instead. She let me.

Billy came back in the morning.

“Holly’s handling Charlie,” I told Regina. “We’ll get him out of here as soon as we can.”

“I ain’t worried about him. I’ll slice his ass if he gets too close.” Her bristle had returned, the first sign that she was feeling better.

“Why’d you let him in?”

“I didn’t. I left the door unlocked while I went down to the laundry. When I came back upstairs he was in the apartment. I recognized him as Billy’s friend, but he still scared the shit out of me. Before I could say anything he started acting crazy. His fat ass never liked Flea, and now he’s saying she set Billy up.”

“A lot of people think that. That’s why Holly and I came over here.”

“You know Flea wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m not the one you have to worry about.”

“You think she’s okay?”

“As long as she got a head start.”

In the front room Charlie stood at the door with his hand on the doorknob. He laughed at something Holly said under his breath.

He looked toward Regina and nodded, the only apology she would get. She rolled her eyes and started to pick up the shattered glass. Charlie looked away.

“I’ma head out.” He moved to the top of the staircase.

“Alright then.” Holly held out his hand. When Charlie reached out to shake it he lowered his voice. “I’ma need a little help moving some shit out to Marin, things gonna be a little shaky in Oakland for a while. You know anybody can help me wit’ that?”

Charlie’s darting eyes betrayed his mouth. “Naw, don’t fuck with Marin. Fools’ll give you a life sentence for a traffic ticket.”

“Well, holler if you hear anything.”

“Peace.”

He took three steps at a time going down. We waited until we heard his car start downstairs.

“Why the man lie like that?” I asked.

“We’ll know soon enough.”

After Charlie’s departure the two of us helped Regina clean up the front room. She was skittish, which indicated that she was more spooked than she let on. We ordered a pizza, and while Holly went to pick it up I quizzed Regina about Reggie and Crim.

“You know how to get hold of Flea’s brothers?”

She looked surprised. “Brothers? Why?”

“They’re about the only ones that can protect her and get her out of Oakland safely if she’s still here.”

“You think it’s that bad?”

I nodded. “Charlie talks a lot of shit, but we can only hold him off so long. I don’t want him to run into Flea first.”

“Won’t Reggie and Crim make things worse?”

“That’s better than the alternative.”

She looked doubtful but she rose to go to the side table. A minute later she produced a notepad. “Flea and I keep our emergency numbers on this. You want to call or should I?”

“You call.”

“Alright.” She hesitated for a minute. “You think you and Holly could stay tonight? That fool might start drinking and come back here.”

“No problem.”

“Good.” She reached for the cordless and walked into the kitchen.

Moments later Holly walked in, carrying the deep-dish and the Sunday edition of
The Oakland Tribune
under his arm.

“Man, you check out the paper.” He threw it down in front of me. Billy’s face stared back at me with lifelike intensity.

It was eerie looking into the eyes of a dead man, but I met the gaze. Silently, I made a promise to him that I would find and protect Felicia.

The headline read:
KINGPIN GUNNED DOWN. MURDER RATE CLIMBS.
I started to read the article aloud.

Regina’s voice interrupted my recitation. “I called.”

Holly sighed, knowing the answer before he asked. “Who?”

“Reggie and Crim.”

He shook his head. “Man, I got a bad feeling about them.”

“You ain’t the only one, but what else can we do?”

“If they can’t find their sister there’s gonna be plenty of bloodshed.”

Regina sat down between us and picked up the newspaper. “They’ll be here in the morning.”

At the edge of my dream I hear someone moving about and talking to me softly, but for now I’m stuck on the baseball field in the middle of the cemetery. The headstones are gray and crumbling, giving way to knotty grass and clumps of dirt with bone fragments mixed in the soil. It’s foggy, with a mist so thick and wet that I have to pull my jersey away from my skin in order to move. The outfield is empty and so are the stands and the dugout. There are only two people on the field, me and my catcher, just like it used to be. He’s in position behind the plate, giving me signals that contradict what the coach shouts from center field.

“Take it easy, son. This guy ain’t got nothing you ain’t seen before.” The coach’s words circle around me, filtered by the fog.

At my feet there are at least three inches of bright yellow tennis balls. I’m bent over, rifling through them, trying to find the perfect one for my next pitch. I pick up one after another, weighing each one in my hand, trying to find the life force.

The catcher gives me the signal for a slider and then pulls off his glove in frustration. “Time!” he shouts.

I can see him moving toward me, but I ignore him and continue to look through the tennis balls.

Behind me the coach sighs in exasperation. “Jesus, what’s this guy doing? Don’t listen to him, Maceo. Don’t lose your concentration. You know what’s at stake here, fella.”

On my back my jersey feels like a pound of concrete. I try again to pull it away from my flesh but I can hear the skin rip with the fabric. I shake everything back into place and kick a few of the balls away.

From the top of my eyelids I can see the catcher’s dress shoes. They are black, with air holes around the toe and tassels on one foot. His cleats sink into the cemetery dust as he stands and waits for my attention.

I refuse to look up and meet his eye. I know he wants to pull me from the game.

“Wassup, Watch Dog?” he asks me in Billy’s voice. “Want me to call the game?”

I nod with my eyes still cast to the ground.

“Well, I can’t, man. We’re in play.” He shuffles his feet back and forth quickly. His cleats leave jagged grooves in the earth. “So, how you gonna fix this?”

He continues to stand in front of me while I toss around a tennis ball. It has the life and weight I need. This is the one, the perfect ball.

The coach continues to make noise from the outfield. “Take it easy, son. Take it easy. He’s just trying to spook you.”

I feel two cold fingers beneath my chin and Billy’s voice again. “It might not be good enough to watch this time. You might have to get in the game, hear what I’m saying?”

He raises my face up to meet his. He’s still wearing his mask, though I can see his teeth through the grating. “You might have to get a little dirty.”

He pulls his mask away. His temples ooze blood from a fresh bullet wound. His eyes are closed, stitched shut with bloody thread.

He yanks his mask back down and trots away. I wind up into pitching stance, secure my pivot foot, not bothering to give him enough time to reach home plate. The ball feels good in my hands. I feel it breathe before I let it go. He turns around at the sound of it coming toward him. It has a life of its own. A fastball. A bullet traveling right to his temple.

T
he article about Billy summed up what the rest of us knew by heart. I woke up sweaty from my nightmare to find myself on Regina’s couch staring at Billy’s newspaper photograph.

The end was approaching fast, but few people knew that. A drought season was coming, sweeping like a hurricane from the coca fields of South America, and only a few were prepared for it. Billy was the only one who seemed to stay ahead of the game. His savvy business tactics never left him without product or without competitive prices.

Regina came into the room holding two cups of coffee and looked over my shoulder at the paper. Holly was scrunched in a chair on the other side of the room. Neither one of us had wanted to sleep in Felicia’s bed. “I gave them that picture of Billy. It was on Flea’s dresser. Some reporter came by Saturday asking me questions.”

“A reporter and Charlie.” I exchanged a look with Holly.
“Why don’t you get dressed and ride with us to my grandparents’ house?”

“What for?”

“It might be safer.”

Regina nodded. She knew the drill, having grown up in New York. Death was death, and she might be next in line.

“You can stay in my cottage if you’re not comfortable in the big house. You know my Aunt Cissy, don’t you?” She nodded. “She lives there.”

“Let me get my things.”

After she disappeared into her room, Holly looked at me and then at his watch. “Countdown.”

“Daddy Al, this is Regina Fowler, Felicia’s roommate. Regina, this is my grandfather, Mr. Redfield.”

“Nice to meet you.” Regina extended her hand, and Daddy Al took her small one in both of his.

“How you, baby?”

She shrugged. “I’ll feel much better once we find Felicia.”

He guided her toward the house. “You’ll feel much better once you taste some of Lady Belle’s cooking. All the family here for lunch. Maceo, go ’head and take her into the house. She can stay upstairs in the twins’ room.”

I grabbed Regina’s suitcase and led her inside.

“C’est toi qui y connais, ma fille! Cre tonnerre!” Gra’mère
stood over a plate of
grillades
talking to my Aunt Phine. The two women were using their fingers to taste the sautéed veal while my grandmother praised it in Creole. She always reverted to her childhood language whenever she was angry or excited about something.

The baby in a large family of beautiful women, my grandmother stands five feet eleven inches, with brassy hair and a
smoky voice. She’s been prematurely gray since the age of twenty-seven, and she wears her silvery locks down to her elbows.

Gra’mère’s people on the maternal side, the Seigneleys, were members of Louisiana’s
gens de couleur libre
because of a liaison between a female ancestor and a representative of the French crown. On her father’s side the Tessier-Bouchaunds enjoyed freedom because of a Spanish nobleman’s indiscretion.

The proud knowledge that royalty runs in the Bouchaund veins on both sides has less to do with Europe and everything to do with the Creole traditions of Natchitoches and West Feliciana parishes. I’ve been taught since childhood to be proud of my heritage, bloodstained hands and all.

“Ça va, mon cocodrie?”
I moved forward to kiss Gra’mère, laughing at the nickname she wouldn’t relinquish. I had been
cocodrie,
or “crocodile,” since before I could remember. As soon as I learned to stand, I would hold on to the railings of my crib, lean my chin on the top, and peer at them. Gra’mère said it reminded her of the bayou gators floating in the water.

“What’s up, Aunt Phine?” I called to Josephine.

“Same old.” She offered a cheek for me to kiss and went back to her cooking. “I’m catering a bridal shower this weekend for some little pretend-Creole bride.”

Like the rest of my aunts, Phine was not known for her patience or generous tongue. None of them suffered fools. In addition to the restaurant, Phine and her twin, Cornelia—or Nelia, as we called her—ran a successful troupe of male strippers.