Young God: A Novel (8 page)

“Damn, she looks like she just got her wings,” somebody says.

COY HAWKINS
is sitting in the other chair. Where the man used to be. He’s looking at her arm. Nikki looks at it, too. There’s dried blood in the crook of her elbow.

She blinks at him. She thinks she sees something flicker across his face before he goes back to looking at her like always.

“You’re fucking up.”

He says this and gets up.

NIKKI FEELS FLUISH.
She’s wrapped in a blanket. She lies like a dead thing on the couch. The front door squeals. Wesley walks in. He looks at her. He nods at her bleached head.

“Nice,” he says.

That other man comes in behind him, the big one from before, the Bubba. He has to stoop. His eyes fly around the living room. Nikki sits up.

“You know Chad?” Wesley says.

“What’s up?” Bubba says.

She just stares.

“What do you want?”

Wesley snaps his fingers and clicks his fists together.

“Two pieces,” he says.

She stands up. She points at them.

“You have to wait outside,” she says.

She locks the door behind them. She hurries into the bedroom. She knocks two chunks out of Coy Hawkins’s boots. She searches for him. Of course he is nowhere. In the kitchen she grabs the knife.

She flings the front door wide. They’re both leaning against a car. She goes down the steps and through the yard.

“Whoa,” Wesley says.

“Goddamn,” Bubba says.

They only put up their hands halfway again. The knife’s trembling.

“You can’t just bring anybody up here.”

Nikki shoves the two chunks into Wesley’s chest.

“Cash,” she says.

“WHERE WERE YOU?”

Onto the card table Coy Hawkins throws the pickup keys.

“Out,” he says.

He shrugs. He sits down in the chair across from her. He puts his leg up on his knee. Then he switches it. He’s sweaty. When she tries to meet his eye he looks at the ceiling. He stands up.

She watches him walk down the hall, stiffly. She sees his keys.

IT MUST BE SATURDAY NIGHT.
In town the cruise line crawls through the Walmart parking lot. It clogs all the aisles. Everybody in every passing car squints into the pickup, trying to see who it is. Nikki rolls her eyes.

When she finally gets inside it’s bright and huge like always but now, she thinks, she could buy anything.

First she does everything she’s never been allowed to do. She sprays on perfume. She tries on lingerie. She looks at shrimp rings and steaks. In electronics she leans against a display case and watches the wall of TVs for a while.

She buys a phone and minutes for it. She pays with bills peeled off a thick wad.

In the parking lot she passes these girls she knows from middle school sitting on the hood of a car. She looks at them like she’s never seen them before. Also she bought a pair of black boots. They have chains and they ring as she goes by.

“SQUARE?”
the nail lady says.

Nikki makes a face.

“Pointy,” she says.

The nail lady shakes the polish bottle. They’re the only ones in here. The nail lady has a paper face mask but Nikki does not. The fumes are suffocating only her.

“I want red instead,” Nikki says.

The nail lady puts down the hot pink. She winks at Nikki.

“So grown-up,” she says.

Nikki glares at her.

WITH HER NEW NAILS
it’s hard to open peanut shells. She tosses a few on the floor. She’s never had fake tips. She’s never been here before. It’s not so great. It’s full of the same rednecks as everywhere else. She smokes a cigarette. She sits in the corner of a booth and scratches her puncture wound.

“Sweetie, you all right?”

She looks at the ash that’s dripped on top of her steak and then up at the waitress.

“What?” Nikki says.

IN THE STEAKHOUSE PARKING LOT
she thinks it’s them: DSS. They get out of a plain car. They walk right at her. They look like a regular man and woman but Nikki knows she has seen them.

She turns on her heel. She goes back inside. She marches past the hostess. All through the dining room the floor crunches. It’s a carpet of shells. She slips out the back door and runs to the woods.

For a long time she crouches up on a hill. She tries not to break a twig. Some cooks come out dragging garbage bags but that’s it.

On the way back a car flashes its brights and she freaks out until it swerves around, passing her.

SHE WANTS TO RUN OVER
his stupid bike. Levi trails her around the last bend and into the yard. Another car is parked where the pickup goes. She pulls in next to it. She climbs out.

“Don’t you have any friends?” she yells at him.

Before she opens the trailer door she stands on her tiptoes. She peers into the window that looks like a fan.

The living room’s empty. The man in the kitchen squints at her. He grins. He slaps his hand on the card table.

“Jesus Christ, look at her.”

Nikki stands in the kitchen doorway and stares at him.

“You remember me?” he says.

“No,” she says.

Yes, she does. His face is mostly teeth.

“Come on. I used to be over at the house all the time.”

He chins toward the big house. He’s sitting across from Coy Hawkins.

“You took my fucking truck,” Coy Hawkins says.

The crack looks like a sugar cookie. It’s knotted in a baggie, white and flat. It’s on the table by Coy Hawkins’s fingers. Nikki nods at it.

“What’s that?” she says.

Coy Hawkins takes a long guzzle of his beer before he looks at her again.

Absently Nikki drops the bag in her hands.

“I got you steak,” she says.

SHE HATES THE SMELL OF CRACK.
It makes her heart race. It makes her nervous. Every five minutes it sneaks its burning-plastic stink under the bathroom door.

Back then she used to sing. She hums to herself. She fumbles with a balloon. She almost rips off her new nails. She can’t do anything with them.

Gunshots. Hunters.

“It’s okay,” she says.

Later she sits in a ring of burnt foil. She looks at her arms and legs. She is so pale, she thinks. Though it’s summer still.

HE FUCKS HER UP AGAINST THE DRESSER.
She puts her hands out so her head doesn’t slam the mirror. Something is rubbing a raw place on her neck. She turns and grabs his ear in her teeth and jerks. He staggers back. Onto the carpet she spits a diamond stud. When she looks at him his face is as pretty as always.

“Didn’t my daddy cut you?”

The gorilla pimp shoves a gun in her mouth. That’s how he does it. Nikki fights to wake up.

WESLEY’S IN THE YARD.

“Don’t shoot,” he says.

It’s just him. He’s grinning. Nikki looks at her hands but she doesn’t have a gun or a knife or anything. She sways on the steps. She’s really high.

“Can I come in?”

She wonders what her hair looks like. She touches it. Nikki shrugs at him.

They sit at the card table.

“He here?” Wesley says.

Nikki looks down the hall at the shut bedroom door and shakes her head.

“How much you want?” she says.

“A ki,” Wesley says.

Nikki thinks about this. She reaches down and scratches her leg.

“A ki?”

“Yeah.”

“Who goes from two ounces to a ki?” she says.

“Look, I got the money. If you can get it,” Wesley says.

Nikki looks at him.

She picks up the pen on the table. She grabs his arm and stretches it out and writes the number of her new phone on the inside of it.

Wesley’s grinning again. The bedroom door opens. Coy Hawkins comes out. He is butt-naked except for his boots. Nikki watches him walk down the hall and into the kitchen.

He opens the refrigerator. He closes it with a beer in his hand. His dick is not tall and pink. It hangs like a shrimp from a matted tuft of hair. He looks at them.

“Sup?” Wesley says.

Coy Hawkins cracks his beer. Nikki watches him walk back down the hall and into the bedroom and shut the door.

Under the table Wesley kicks her.

“YOU KNOW HOW MUCH A KI COSTS?”

“A lot,” Nikki says.

Coy Hawkins looks at her.

“Yeah,” he says.

In the kitchen he’s opening all the cabinets.

“So what you gotta ask yourself is where is he getting the money?” Coy Hawkins says.

“Where do you think?”

Coy Hawkins looks at her again. His eyes get wide.

“It could be a lot of people,” he says.

He opens all the drawers.

“What are you doing?” Nikki says.

“Looking for something.”

“Why were you naked before?”

“I was jerking off.”

“Oh,” she says.

Coy Hawkins is holding a crack pipe. The glass is clouded up. It’s already burnt brown. He points it at her.

“That boyfriend of yours is trying to cut us out.”

Coy Hawkins walks into the living room.

SHE IS SKINNIER THAN SHE HAS EVER BEEN.
Also she is blonder. Naked, in the bathroom mirror, she stares at herself. He’s just jealous, she thinks. Because she’s moving weight and he’s not. She slips a hand between her legs.

SHE SEES HIM IN THE MIRROR.
He comes up behind her. He pulls her hair. He pulls until her neck is arched and her head is tilted back.

“I’m the man and you’re the girl,” Coy Hawkins says.

She wants to say something back but she can’t close her mouth. She hates these wild bad dreams. She hears a loud bang. She is awake.

Earlier the man was here and she bought a needle off him for a dollar. Nikki looks at it. It’s stuck in her arm.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

WHEN SHE COMES OUT
into the living room there’s a hole in the wall. It’s a small hole but it goes all the way through to pink insulation. Coy Hawkins has turned his chair from the TV to face it. Plaster’s rained around him. He stabs his bat in the carpet.

“I’m looking for something,” he says.

“What?” Nikki says.

“Cameras.”

Coy Hawkins stands up and then he sits down again.

“Probably.”

“You’re fucking up,” Nikki screams.

SHE HOLDS HER PHONE
in the air. She walks almost to the bottom road. When she gets reception all her texts come in at once. They’re all from the same number. The last one says “u owe me remember.”

Nikki leans against a tree. She stares at the woods for a second. They’re gloomy and still. They look like they don’t give a shit, she thinks.

“i can get it,” she texts.

Up above her Levi’s zigzagging the hill. Back and forth, lazily. He’s not even looking at her. Her phone glows.

“come here,” Wesley texts.

The keys are in the pickup where she left them.

“THAT’S THE MONEY?”

“Yeah,” Wesley says.

The book bag’s on the built-in table. It’s unzipped. It’s full of cash. Nikki stands in the camper with her hands on her hips.

“Where did you get it?” she says.

“I got a couple investors.”

“Investors?”

Wesley mutes the TV. The girls stop groaning. He chins at the couch beside him.

“Sit down,” he says.

She perches on the very edge. The curtain’s pushed all the way back. It looks picked up in there, like he stuffed all the redneck girl’s stuff behind the air mattress.

“This shit’s the future,” Wesley says.

Nikki looks at him. He’s holding a heroin balloon. There’s a whole party bag of them and a scale on the table, too.

“I know,” Nikki says.

“I know you robbed Lee Church,” Wesley says.

She stares at him.

“What?”

Wesley puts his hand on her leg.

“You don’t need him.”

“Who?” Nikki says.

“Coy Hawkins,” Wesley says.

His pupils are so pinned. His greenest green eyes almost sparkle at her. He squeezes her thigh.

“It could be just me and you,” he says.

Nikki looks at the book bag. So does Wesley. Then he leans back on the couch.

“Your guy, he’s in Charlotte?” Wesley says.

Nikki nods at him.

“You’re trying to cut me out.”

“What?” Wesley says.

Nikki picks up the glass ashtray. She smashes it as hard as she can over Wesley’s head.

Blood pours out. He tries to stand up and his knees buckle.

“You fucking cunt,” he says.

Nikki grabs the book bag again. Also the bag of Mama’s clothes.

SHE MERGES ONTO THE INTERSTATE
and it is jerky and insane. The pickup is much harder to drive than Wesley’s car. She has to muscle the steering wheel. She rides the brakes to read the road signs and tractor-trailers wail around.

She takes the Kannapolis exit. It’s a long, winding highway and then stop signs and stoplights and finally boxy lots with short grass and chain fences.

She parks on a wide street where every house looks the same. She does not clean off her cat’s eyes. In the rearview mirror she just lines over what’s left. They are wilder than Angel’s. They look much more like wings.

She climbs the steps of a white and sagging house. She takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes and opens them.

The little girl answers the door in her tutu. Nikki smiles at her.

“Is your daddy in?”

THEY WATCH TV.
It’s in Spanish but by now Nikki understands. She’s been here for an hour. She looks at the bed sheet.

The little girl lies on the couch with her feet in the air. She has matching pink slippers. She has a different baby doll. She’s chewing on its plastic fist. Nikki looks at her.

Nikki takes the baby doll out of the little girl’s mouth. She knocks over the blow-up castle. She cracks the front door and throws the doll out. When she comes back the little girl is sitting up. Nikki waits for her to cry but she screams instead. A high shriek that pierces Nikki’s ears.