The Dying Ground (9 page)

“Let’s not get into all that.”

“Why not? Where else you got to go?”

“Right now, my only concern is finding Felicia and making sure she’s alright.”

“What do the police think?”

“Those idiots …”

“Y’all youngstas pick some curious enemies. Drug dealers should be your enemies. I ain’t saying the police are knights in shining armor, but y’all accept criminals without question.”

I stood to go. “I’m not in school this semester, remember. I get to skip your lectures.”

“Okay, then, let’s talk about that! Why aren’t you in school? I looked your grades up. They’re decent. You got some other kind of trouble?”

“Life. I’m just taking a break.”

“Break, huh? You’ll break right to the graveyard if you don’t watch out.” He paused. “Just like your friend Billy.”

He dissolved into a foul mood, me not far behind him as Scottie ran up the bleachers.

I gave him a pound. “You ready to head on home?”

I shook hands with Livingston and followed Scottie out to my car. Scottie was a stray much like Holly had been, with a harassed young mother as his only parent. I’d had more than one encounter with Miss Chantal, so I avoided her like the plague. Scottie and I had a ritual that helped me to accomplish that. I would drop him on the corner and watch him run to his house. Once he was safely inside he’d turn the bathroom light on and off three times: our signal. Then I’d hit my gas pedal before Chantal came out onto the porch.

Once, when I first met Scottie, I pulled an overnight with Chantal that I regretted the moment it began. The one time I felt sorry for her was the one time I woke up in her bed.

In the car Scottie shuffled through the cassettes scattered on the floor.

“Can I play this?” He was waving an NWA tape.

“NWA! Your mama lets you listen to them?”

“Shoot, my mama the one bought it for me.”

“You need to be jockin’ Kid n’ Play.” He grimaced. “Or the Fresh Prince.”

“They ain’t saying nothing.”

I had to agree, but I still thought NWA and a seven-year-old should stay as far away from each other as possible. “How ’bout this?” I handed him LL Cool J’s latest. “You think he’s a sucker too?”

He grabbed the cassette. “He’s cool.” He popped in the tape, turned it up loud, looked at me, and grinned. “That’s my song right there.”

We rode in silence for a moment, listening to the music and watching the theater of the Oakland streets.

“Maceo, why don’t you play baseball anymore?”

His question nearly made me miss a turn. I turned down the radio. “What made you ask that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. My mama and her friend was talking about it yesterday.”

“What your mother know about baseball?” I tried leading him off the trail.

“I taught her a little bit of stuff, but her friend knows more than me. She said they use to call you the Watcher.”

I corrected him. “The Watch Dog.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Just a nickname. I used to take a long time before each pitch so people started calling me that.”

“Dang, you was the pitcher! Jason Stevens pitches on our team. He’s hella raw. He can throw a fastball the
coach
can’t even hit.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.” He paused for a moment. “I want to throw like that. You wanna teach me?”

“I thought you was shortstop.”

“I can do both.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep, so I figured you could show me some of your tricks.”

“You want me to give away my superpowers?”

Scottie laughed. “My mama’s friend said you use to watch them put the white lines on the field before the game.”

I was shocked by this tidbit I’d forgotten. Once before a game I’d arrived early enough to find the groundskeeper putting the lines on the field. I sat in the dugout alone and watched him go about his job. He was an old cat, probably years past the retirement age, but he took his job seriously. He was slow and methodical, and I found I pitched better whenever he handled the field.

“Your mama’s friend a Fed? Why she know so much about me?”

“She went to school wit’ you.”

“What’s her name?”

“Patrice Hall.”

“Uh, nasty Patrice?” Scottie’s head whipped around so fast I knew I’d made a mistake. Sometimes when we got deep in conversation I would forget he was a little boy.

“Why you call her that?”

“I was just kidding. You know I like to mess with you sometimes.” He looked skeptical but didn’t press the issue.

Patrice Hall was the perfect friend for Chantal, but I’d never say that to Scottie. She was two years behind me in school and an avid fan of baseball players. Unlike the majority of my teammates, I’d resisted the fruit off that tree.

S
cottie tapped me on the leg and pointed to an ambulance parked haphazardly at the curb in front of his home. A group of neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk, rubbernecking and hoping for snatches of conversation that might include remnants of the truth.

Scottie’s apartment building was a horseshoe-shaped two-story complex called Bay Manor Villas, or the BMVs, which in local lingo translated to Baby’s Mama Village because of all the single mothers that lived inside. The courtyard consisted of burnt-out grass and a jungle gym that had seen too many unsupervised children. Daddy Al, the latest owner, replaced the structure every four months and instructed the kids and parents to take better care, but the words didn’t seem to stick.

“There’s my mama.” Scottie leaned his head out the window and beamed at the woman scowling in my direction. Chantal stood at the head of the gathered crowd, arms folded
across her chest, braids piled on top of her head. She had the look of a wolf that had just caught its prey. Me.

I followed Scottie out of the car. “Maceo, Maceo, Maceo, what I gotta do to catch up with you?” She asked the question in a taunting singsongy voice.

I nodded toward the ambulance. “What’s up?”

“One a these crackheads going into labor. I hope they take the baby right there at the hospital and give it half a chance.”

“Chantal, man, that’s cold-blooded.”

“Nah, uh-uh, her not having her tubes tied is cold-blooded.”

“Did you call the ambulance?” Chantal was the unofficial apartment manager of the complex, a polite way of saying she monitored all the comings and goings, breakups and makeups, of the inhabitants. After meeting Scottie and hearing about his old neighborhood, Daddy Al rented a first-floor apartment to Chantal. He never regretted a good deed but he grew to regret her weekly reports on who was doing what, who might be trying to move out in the middle of the night, and who wasn’t paying rent but just had a big-screen TV delivered. Both he and Gra’mère had become used to tenant phone calls complaining about Chantal’s guerrilla tactics.

“Yeah, I called; you know she ain’t got no phone. Knocked on my door, hemming and hawing and holding on to that little scrawny belly.” She looked toward the paramedics as they made their way down from the second floor. “Oh, and here come Miss Thang.”

Chantal’s eyes were focused on a woman walking behind the paramedics and spitting out information with an authority that didn’t match her surroundings. Miss Thang was dressed in a nylon jogging suit stretched to the limits by a generous figure. She had a short boyish haircut, high cheekbones, and slanted Asian eyes. I watched as she held the patient’s hand until she was lifted into the ambulance.

The crowd started to disperse once the ambulance turned the corner and the sirens faded away. I continued to stare as the woman bent down to tie her shoelaces and look at her watch.

“What you lookin’ at?”

Scottie giggled as his mother busted me out with her nosy question.

“Man, why you so mean? You’re just evil, Chantal.”

“Whatever.” She turned to the jogger. “Where you on your way to?”

“I came to see if Scottie wanted to run the lake with me.” Scottie perked up at the mention of his name.

“Scottie got homework, dinner, chores—”

“We won’t be gone long. I thought we could run, then stop for some ice cream.”

“Ya thought wrong. I don’t know how they do it where you from, but you cain’t just stop by unannounced and expect peoples to drop they plans.”

She held up her hands. “You’re right, Chantal.” Her voice was polite but impatient. “Next time I’ll call when I want to spend time with my family.”

“Oh, now we family.”

“We always been family.”

Chantal guffawed loudly into the air. “Yeah, right.”

The woman’s eyes flickered over me in one dismissive gesture. I saw immediately that her gaze placed me on the far side of drug dealer. I looked no different from the boyfriends and exes that snuck in and out of the complex at all hours of the night. Her assumption bothered me and so did the possibility that she had placed Chantal and me together. I moved toward my car.

“Where you going? I ain’t finished talking to you,” Chantal snapped.

“Well, I’m finished taking your abuse.”

“I ain’t even said nothing. I thought you was a tough guy, hanging around with ballers, hustlers. Ain’t some a Holly’s cool rubbed off on you?”

I ignored her and spoke to Scottie. “Next time, little man.”

“Don’t forget about what I asked you.”

My mind was a blank. “What was that?”

“Pitching. Teaching me how to pitch.”

I hesitated. “We’ll talk about it.”

The jogger stepped up to Chantal’s side. She stood with her hands on her hips, an anger I couldn’t claim right behind her eyes. “Don’t you want to give him a straight answer?”

Chantal looked amused. “Relax, girl, that ain’t his daddy.” Bewilderment crossed the jogger’s face. Chantal smiled at me. “I been trying to explain to sister-girl that Scottie’s father ain’t a factor, but she don’t hear me when I talk.”

She looked at me. “Sorry, I just thought—”

“Don’t worry about it.” I caught her eye over the roof of the car. “I’m Maceo Redfield.”

She held up a hand and gave a small wave. “Alixe Hunter.”

Scottie grabbed her hand. “This my Auntie Alixe. My mama’s sister from Japan.”

“Which explains why she wants to go jogging close to sundown.” Chantal continued her biting commentary. “Everybody else locked in the house, and she wanna go run the streets looking for trouble.”

“The lake is well lit,” Alixe countered.

“The bushes ain’t, and somebody’ll drag your ass in there so quick.”

“Thanks for worrying about me.” She looked at me. “So, how do you know my nephew?”

“The Big Brother program. Me and waterhead been hooked up for about a year.”

She wrapped her arms around Scottie and kissed him on the head. “Nice kid, huh?”

I smiled at Scottie. “Sometimes.”

Scottie scowled. “I ain’t a troublemaker.”

“Of course you’re not.” She kissed him again. “You can jog with me another time. Okay?”

“Call first.” Chantal couldn’t resist a last jab.

“I’ma get out of here too.” I had visions of intercepting the jogger on the next block.

“There you go again, running off. Should I make an appointment to sit down and talk to you? ’cause you know you never said why you don’t call.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, with me being Scottie’s Big Brother and all. I don’t want things to get messy with him.”

“You wasn’t worried about all that when I met you at the club. You was kinda glad when you crawled in my bed.” Luckily, Alixe was distracted by Scottie.

“‘Crawled’ being the operative word.”

“Don’t talk shit.” She moved closer while I backed away. “What? You afraid of me now?”

“I was afraid of you then.”

“Trick.” But there was a little more humor in her voice.

Alixe watched us with interest.

“I’ll catch y’all later.”

“Wait. You hear about Billy Crane?”

“Yeah. Holly told me this morning.”

“He was cool people. Too bad. Didn’t you kick it with his girlfriend for a minute?”

“She was a friend of mine.”

“So, you the shooter? You know, clear the way for yourself?”

I slid into the front seat. “You’s a cold piece of work, Chantal.”

She shrugged her shoulders while I locked eyes with her sister. I got nothing back. In the rearview I caught sight of them both and almost laughed aloud. Side by side the two women represented the light and dark sides of my desire. Chantal, easy access and not at all what I wanted, while her sister physically represented everything I’d ever dreamed about—beauty, body to die for—just like Felicia.