4
I haven’t had a single real conversation with Deangelo in years, but back in the day we managed to have a really solid tune between us. We used to spend afternoons together on this old ranch owned by a couple of ancient creepy folks who were the grandparents of an incredibly regrettable pair of identical twins in our grade named Casey and Dalton. These two were the type that despite their uniquely symmetrical lives, had little interest in doing one another any favors. They never quite got on, and didn’t desire to. Their only purpose, as far as I saw it, was to make each other and those around them, as miserable as humanly possible.
The first time I met them, we were in Ms. Walter’s kindergarten class together. They were particularly grimy and juiced up that day on what I imagined were three or four bowls of cereal and Pop-Tarts. They were feral beasts. That day, I saw Dalton rip all the sugar packets out of Ms. Walter’s coffee drawer and pour them into his mouth as fast as he could manage. His sticky gremlin lips were already lined with some sort of grayish green, vomitous gook and after that, he sat there shaking and hyperventilating for an hour. He had a fucking armful of sugar packets, rocking in the corner of the classroom during nap time and nobody did a thing about it. He kept tearing more and more tiny pink packages at the tops and plummeting the sugar straight to his gullet. It was repugnant, but I couldn’t look away. I almost hated him for it. His brother Casey was no Casanova either. That same year I saw him pick Dalton’s nose and then place it on the tip of his tongue like a tab of acid and eat it. He had this long monkey grin, spread wide and thin across his face as he giggled low-like and did it proudly. He was a psychopath, and I knew it. They were both twisted forms of mountain children stripped of any intricacies of human behavior. They bit people too.
Deangelo and I had to spend time with this lovely pair and the pair that had raised them every day after school. It was hellish. Five minutes with their grandparents and you’d know Casey and Dalton never stood a chance. Their gramps and grams were skeleton thin, white-haired monsters and their ranch just so happened to be where the bus would drop Deangelo and me off in the country. For three unsteady hours each afternoon we were subjected to their sinister property until one of our moms came through post shift and took us home, some five miles down VV and Woodland.
One day, shortly after arriving, Deangelo and I were ordered to join the grandpa out back in the barn, a towering, decrepit structure that was always shedding red paint as if it were bleeding. Casey and Dalton sniggered behind us as they followed, rolling around in the grass together and yelping like hyenas. Deangelo and I didn’t speak a whole lot on that ranch and that day was no different. We were always on the brink of some sort of terror, and what was there to say about that? Unfortunately, there were no midday snacks, no milk and honey.
On that particularly hot sun-setter, this grotesquely aging, some 100-pound grandfather led us to his chicken coop and handed Deangelo a small, rusted hatchet. In the thick Midwestern barn-hay heat, the old crook picked out a poor chicken from behind the wire and stretched its neck over a sanded tree stump. The chicken screeched and moaned hideous, heartbreaking sounds as it flailed all around. It knew what was coming.
Wide-eyed Deangelo held the hatchet, shaking, as the grandpa loomed over him, spitting his tobacco and commanding him to split the thing’s neck clean in two. When Deangelo began to tear up from dread and compassion, the old man growled the order over and over again, “Do it, boy, do it. Do it now boy!”
Though the old man would be no threat to us now, so diminutive in his sickly nature, he sure was vicious and threatening back then. Deangelo didn’t have a choice. He swung the hatchet through the neck of the chicken and screamed out to God while he did it. The blood erupted, squirting all over his shirt and his face and a bit of my shoe lace.
Later, on the upper deck of the haystacks Deangelo wept as I patted his back and swore to never tell a soul about any of it.
Now, I’m smiling at Deangelo next to a tipped over blue Porta Potti that’s muffling Matchbox’s whimpering.
“He won’t come out, huh?”
Deangelo, a medium build with solid shoulders and a tightly carved face, has a toothpick hanging loosely from his large mouth, dark lips. He has a thin mustache and thick black ultra-curled afro type wonderful hair. He’s flanked on either side by a couple guys, Jermaine and Sosa, quiet types that I’d never had any quarrels with. Their jaws clench but we nod our greetings in respect. They’re both mammoth-sized and pretty mean if pushed, but simple souled. Not evil or anything. Leon and Prince hang back some five feet behind me. I smirk. They’re always weirdly confident I can sweet talk our way out of a good old-fashioned scrum, and most times, I can, though I’ve failed in my efforts plenty. Over the years, we’ve found ourselves in many battles. Johnston is a bit of a pressure cooker that way, a place where boys and men often struggled with words and preferred to use their fists to settle things. All to say, we’re not afraid. It’s not our first rodeo. Still, we’d all prefer it doesn’t go down that way. We know what it will cost us. It’s just that, around here, sometimes there’s no other way.
Deangelo grins and takes the tooth pick out of his mouth with his right forefinger and thumb.
He scratches the middle of his forehead with it, wet with sweat and says, “Nah, he won’t.”
I find myself thinking about the chicken, wondering if Deangelo remembers that afternoon, but somewhere deep in his eyes, trying to hide, I can tell that he does. It’s wild how far we’ve come in all these years. His dark brown eyes are the same, deep and serious and fixed. The whites are streaked bloody with fatigue and the grind. Matchbox whimpers desperately from inside the Porta Potti.
“Cash? Cash is that you? Man, please, you gotta get me out of here. Please man.” It’s the sorriest sound. I look at Deangelo and say, “You didn’t have to tip the thing over on him man.”
“Did.”
“What do you want with that lump anyway?”
“Don’t matter none to me if he’s a bitch.”
“He’s covered with shit in there . And piss.”
“Don’t matter.”
“He’s probably going blind with the smell and whatever that, uh, chemical is they pour in there, what is it, uh, that fuckin blue shit,” and from behind me Leon mutters, “Biocides,” and I repeat, “Yeah, biocides—”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“This all over a girl?”
“Not just any girl.”
“What’d he say?”
“He was running his mouth.”
“’Bout Lyla?”
“Mhm.”
“Come on, man, what’s he got on Lyla?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“He ain’t fuckin ’round with Lyla—”
“I know he ain’t.”
“Look, he didn’t fuck her, I promise—”
“I ain’t said he fucked her—”
“He didn’t—”
“I ain’t say that.”
“Well, what’d he say?”
“He say he fucked her.”
“But he didn’t—”
“Man fuck , that ain’t what I’m sayin—”
“Alright, alright—”
“I’m sayin he said he did. And, man, you know.”
“I know?”
“You know that’s enough.”
“He really said that?”
“He did.”
“Why?”
“I don’t fuckin know. Ask him.”
I look at the Porta Potti as it rumbles a bit more and say, “Matchbox.”
“Cash. You gotta get me outta here Cash. Please.” He begs.
“Why’d you say that about Lyla?”
“Cash. I’m dying in here man, please.”
“Why’d you say something like that?”
“I dunno, I dunno. I’m sorry. I can’t breathe—”
“You’re fine.” Deangelo cuts him off.
I rub my mouth with my hand, scoffing at the sheer absurdity of the situation. I feel terrible for Matchbox but what did he expect?
“You’re not gonna let me get him out of there, are you?” I ask.
“No.” He shakes his head. “Sorry Cash. Can’t let you do that.”
“Well.” I look back at the guys. Prince just purses his lips and shrugs his shoulders. Leon’s upset but what can we do? We aren’t about to fight to the death over this, not when Matchbox brought the whole thing on himself. So, I relent.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Fine. Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t know he was saying all that about Lyla. Matchbox?”
“Yeah? Cash, c’mon, please—”
“I’m sorry, man. You can’t go around talking like that, you know better. Just hang tight for a while, yeah? We’ll get you out when we can.”
“No, no, no—”
“Shut your fuckin mouth,” Sosa growls and kicks the thing.
“Alright. What are we talking about, then?” Deangelo asks.
“I don’t know. Just don’t kill the guy.”
“Aight.”
“And we’ll come back later.”
“Not before midnight.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it, not one minute before.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
And I believe him, more or less. I know he finds it all justified. It’s brutal, but things like this are sometimes settled this way here in Johnston. We brokered deals for justice when we could. Matchbox has always been prone to running his mouth, and Deangelo just simply wasn’t the guy you ran your mouth to, anyone could tell you that. I know some sort of punishment is deserved but I also know Deangelo. If he cried over killing a chicken, he wouldn’t kill Matchbox. We stop talking for a second and I feel myself becoming pretty sentimental for a beat.
“How’s your mom?” I ask.
“Mom’s aight.”
“Good. Good man.” He takes a fine long look at me and wipes a bit of sweat off his forehead which moves from side to side. He says softly, “She still sorry ’bout yours.”
“Yeah, well.”
“As am I, man. As am I.”
“Appreciate that. Long time ago.”
“In a way.”