Yaccub's Curse (37 page)

“S-so if he’s really Jesus then you really think Scratch is…”

“Satan. And not just figuratively or metaphorically. I ain’t talkin’ about that racist Muslim shit. I’m not just sayin’ he’s got evil in him. I’m sayin’ he
is
evil. Evil made flesh. I’m sayin’ that Scratch is the literal Satan. Lucifer himself. And if we let him get his hands on this kid the sun is gonna set on all of us forever.”

“Yeah, well, as long as this mutherfucker can bleed ain’t no way he’s gonna do shit to this kid.” Huey reached out to rustle the baby’s thin whispy hair and drew his hand back quickly when the child turned his tiny head and smiled at him.

“See, fool! Now you got me all spooked.” Huey chided with half a frown and half a smile fighting for control over his face. Christina and Iesha were both staring at the baby trying to see what we had seen in him. Huey was frowning, trying hard not to believe.

Christina and I had finally adjourned to the bedroom leaving Huey and Iesha alone on the long tattered couch. The baby was once again lying in the center of the bed between the pillows. We left him there and lay down on the floor beneath her queen-sized comforter. A sheet lay between the thin carpet and our naked bodies. Christina was wound up tight with sexual tension, but trying to hold back, not sure if I would be in the mood so soon after hearing of my grandmother’s death. Honestly, I was trying to mourn, remembering the strong, loving, cantankerous old woman that used to bake me pies every Sunday for desert, but my flesh was responding to the heat radiating from her, the wetness of her sex against my leg, and the subconscious gyrations of her hips. I rolled her over and entered her.

“Thank God.” She gasped as my manhood slid deeper into her, “I thought I was gonna explode if you didn’t take me soon.”

We made love slowly, with uncharacteristic warmth and affection, both of us delaying our orgasms until they built into a massive eruption that shook us violently; our juices commingling in a rushing wave of mutual ecstasy. I drove myself so deeply into her that I could feel her heartbeat. When it was over we held each other in silence. I slept almost immediately and had a pleasant dream in which I never woke up— then the morning came and the dream ended.

It was a windy, October morning, cloudy and damp. The trees were ablaze with reds, yellows, and oranges that fluttered to the ground in pastel colored heaps. A thick layer of clouds covered the sky to the horizon with a somber ceiling of gray. Funeral weather.

Huey and I drove through the winding turns on Lincoln Drive with the windows down and the wind whipping through the car’s interior like a minor hurricane. I didn’t mind. It kept the tears out of my eyes. Iesha and Christina had awakened us early in the morning with bacon, eggs, corn flakes, and kisses. Huey wolfed down the bacon without a thought.

“I thought Muslims didn’t eat pork?”

“I never said I was Muslim. That was your interpretation of it. I just agree with some of their beliefs…” He forked another slice of bacon into his mouth and smiled slyly, “…but not all of them.”

Christina was growing attached to the baby and had already changed and fed him by the time I had finished showering. He was lying on the couch staring at an improvised mobile of cat toys Christina had bought from the supermarket and attached to a hanger.

“What can we do for a crib?”

“My mom used to keep Tank in a dresser drawer when he was that little.”

“Tank wasn’t never that little,” I joked and then my heart sank and silence descended like the final curtain of a failed play. We were all just going through the motions, pretending as if everything was okay. As if all the death that had surrounded us for the past week was inconsequential…nothing but a thing. But after a while it became impossible to suspend our belief and we simply stopped talking rather than have to articulate the fears, angers, and sorrows, that had plagued us through the long night. Huey and I finished our breakfast and dashed outside into the street as if we could somehow leave the pall of death behind us locked in the apartment. We raced Huey’s Monte Carlo out of Center City trying to out run the ghosts that were forever chained to us. My house appeared sullen and empty as the Monte Carlo pulled up and disgorged my long frame out onto the sidewalk. The ghosts caught up to us and wrapped their whispish forms around our shoulders sending small shivers across our skin.

“I’m gonna go home, change, and make a few calls. I’ll pick you up in half an hour… tell your mother you love her.” He sped off around the corner before I could reply, leaving me to face the lifeless building that loomed above me. I took the first few steps toward the house and instinctively looked up at the second story window, as if by some magic Grandma would be there smiling down at me, only to find the curtains drawn closed and the blinds lowered like a shut eye.

Mom was already dressed and ready to go when I walked through the door. Her hair was straightened and pulled back into a tight bun. A black pill box hat with a dark veil sat atop her head held in place with half a dozen Bobby pins. She wore a long black shawl wrapped around her shoulders over a form fitting black dress. Through the veil I could see that her eyes were red and swollen with tears.

“I almost thought you weren’t coming.”

“I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”

“I already laid out your black suit and I pressed a white shirt for you to wear.”

“Mom,” I was halfway up the stairs when I turned back towards her with my eyes wild with grief, “I’m trying to get out. I mean…” I swallowed hard and cleared my throat, “I’m already out of that crap, but there’s just a lot of stuff going on. I’m trying though, Mom. I’m really trying. You’ll see.”

I ran up the stairs to the bathroom leaving her to absorb what I had said.

I showered quickly and dressed even quicker. As I fastened the top button on my shirt and slipped into my jacket it occurred to me that I had no idea how to tie a tie. Mom had always done it for me. Shame-faced, I walked down the stairs holding my tie in my hands and staring at the floor.

“Boy, you ain’t ready yet?”

“Uh-um… I-I don’t know how to tie this.” I looked so pitiful that Mom couldn’t help but laugh. It rolled out of her full and honest, not a mocking laugh, but one full of love. It was the most beautiful sound I had heard in years. She grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me toward her. I bent down to place my head against her chest and listen to the sound of her heartbeat as she hugged me tight against her.

“Boy, I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

She reached a black lace gloved hand under her veil to wipe away the tears, holding me at arms length and appraising the genius of nature’s work.

“Damn, I make some beautiful kids. Let me fix that tie for you, boy.”

She had just finished knotting the tie when Huey pulled up and honked the horn.

“Huey’s driving us?”

“Yeah— uh, my car had an, um, accident.”

Seeing the disapproving frown twist her face as she eyed me suspiciously, made me blush with shame. We had just reconciled and I had already disappointed her.

“Yeah, well, we’d better be going.”

We passed the bullet riddled corpse of my old Impala as we headed up Pomona Street on our way to the funeral parlor. Mom stared at it long and hard then turned her head to look straight ahead without saying a word. The wall between us that had melted away just minutes before was now almost fully rebuilt.

It was the same tacky funeral parlor that had performed the ceremonies for Tank. The same impatient morticians ushered the mourners into the parlor, checking their watches nervously for fear that our funeral would overlap the one they’d scheduled after us, and throwing out words of sympathy with practiced sincerity. The casket was once again placed behind the podium amid the flower arrangements. This time I had to say something. I pulled the head mortician aside.

“Look, bro, I want you to put that podium back behind the casket somewhere.”

The slender old man lowered his wire-framed glasses and looked me up and down as if he were fitting me for my own pine box. He smiled and patted my shoulder lightly the way one would comfort a disgruntled child.

“And why would you have me do that young man?”

“Because it’s disrespectful to have my Grandmother tucked back there like a prop at her own funeral. Like she’s just part of the fuckin’ background.”

“I understand what you are going through right now young man, but I can’t disrupt the whole program—“

“Fuck the program! This ain’t some damn performance. This is my Grandmom!” Realizing that my voice was getting loud, I paused to collect myself. “Now either you get somebody to move that damned casket or I’m going to do it myself,” I lowered my voice to a rumbling growl and leaned in close to his ear, “And then I’ll be looking for a casket to put you into. You feel me?”

The old man looked at me like I was crazy. He was about to protest when something in my eyes changed his mind. He was familiar with how grief could violently ignite tempers and recognized that he was standing in the path of a possible explosion.

“I’ll have it moved right away.”

He shuffled away quickly and a few minutes later the other funeral workers assisted him in relocating the podium on a hastily erected platform behind the casket.

The services went on like a carbon copy of the previous one. The reverend read from the Bible and talked of Grandma’s love and kindness, how much she loved God, and how dearly she would be missed. My great uncle Milton, Grandma’s little brother, got up and told stories about growing up back in the ’50’s with Grandma. I laughed, imagining her in a poodle skirt and Bobby socks doing the twist. The soloist sang and the church ladies cried. We walked up in single file to view the remains. Grandma was laid out in one of her finest church dresses; pink with a white bow on the shoulder and a white sash around the waist and a white pillbox hat with a veil. She was wearing her favorite wig, the one that made her look like a Supreme. I kissed her forehead and told her that I loved her. My tears were dripping down her face when I turned away and walked back to my seat.

After the funeral, I helped carry the casket out to the waiting hearse with the other pallbearers. Huey was across the street in the Monte Carlo nervously checking up and down the street. My left hand was inside my jacket wrapped around the cocked and loaded Beretta while my other arm strained under Grandma’s weight. We made it to the hearse without incident.

The drive to the cemetery, traveling in that long procession of vehicles like sitting ducks, was the longest drive of my life. Were I planning a hit, that would have been the time I would have executed it, while the mark was sandwiched between a row of cars. I’d have had a car pull up right next to the one I was in and ventilate it with gunfire. I was so worried about being attacked that I couldn’t fully concentrate on my own grief. That bastard was even interfering with my mourning.

We left the mortuary behind, and my anxiety increased with every passing block. I couldn’t believe it when we finally passed through the gates of the cemetery.

Had Scratch given up on us? Perhaps that bullet he took during our skirmish in the basement was more serious than it looked? Maybe I had killed him during the car chase when I shot the BMW full of holes? Perhaps Yellow Dog had come after us on his own and now that they were both dead we were safe?

I wanted to believe it all so much, but I knew it was wishful thinking. It was more likely that Scratch just wasn’t smart enough to make the easy hit and was still waiting to make his move, waiting to try something more dramatic.

The burial was a long tedious affair. I kept staring at the road, unable to concentrate on a word the reverend was saying. Just as Grandmom’s casket was being lowered into the ground, a brown Chevy Tahoe followed by a gold Lexus and a black Range Rover came creeping up the road with brothers hanging out the windows carrying assault rifles. One grinning white face with his arm in a sling was among them. Huey slid up beside me.

“Tell your family to get down.” He waved to someone and it was then that I noticed the Twins along with Fat Greg and little Drew hiding behind trees down by the road.

“How did you know he was gonna do it here?”

“You shot him and killed his boy Yellow Dog. He needs to set an example. He wants to wipe out your entire family and here they are all grouped up out in the open. This is where I would have done it. Now tell them to get down!”

“Everybody down! Get down!” I yelled, pulling my Beretta out of the holster in the back of my pants and Huey’s Sig Sauer from my jacket pocket.

They all looked at me as if I had gone mad until Huey whipped Tank’s old AK 47 out from under his trench coat and it began belching death in a stuttering staccato. He was running towards the oncoming cars in a full gallop. I saw my mother’s mortified expression as she dropped to her knees and rage blinded me. I chased after Huey firing both pistols into the advancing vehicles.

“Duck!” I heard Huey yell as return fire came from the three cars, ripping up the sod at our feet. I jumped behind a tombstone, narrowly avoiding being cut in half by nine millimeter slugs.

We crouched behind the tombstones and trees as the hail storm of bullets shredded the manicured lawns and sent chunks of sod and chips of gravestone flying. We returned fire with our own torrent of flaming alloy. Bullets rained through the air like we were in the middle of a war. The sounds of gunfire continued without a break for almost a full minute then it just stopped. Scratch’s cars continued up the road while Drew, and Fat Greg chased after it popping off a few desperate rounds. None of our guys had been hit and despite several hundred rounds sent into the three vehicles, it didn’t appear that any of their guys had been hit either. I popped the clips out of the two pistols and reloaded them.

“Come on, Huey. Let’s finish this shit right now.”

We jumped into the Monte Carlo and sped off after Scratch, leaving my family behind, rising from the grass terrified and confused.

“They’re splitting up.”