After Death(50)

Now, in this orchard of dead trees, where “Macarena” no longer echoes, soaked to the skin for the lack of rain gear, his mud-caked shoes heavier by the minute, with four decommissioned vehicles to be somehow repaired and started and driven away, with as many as eight discarded phones to be retrieved, Aleem has reached the end of his patience. He no longer wants to rape Nina in company with Kuba, and he no longer wants to watch Kuba take her apart over several hours. His fury at her for putting him in this position burns in his mind with such intensity that it will consume him if he doesn’t soon make her pay, burns as hot as the wrath of Pepe Blanco, which drove that righteous, proud man to deal as he had with the physician, novelist, and priest. Neither putting a bullet in Nina’s head nor stabbing her a hundred times will be sufficient to repair the damage she has done to Aleem’s pride. Nothing short of burying her alive will satisfy him.

Her and the boy. John has been witness to his mother’s total lack of respect for his father and to Aleem’s humiliation at the stubborn woman’s hands. After so many years in Nina’s company, the kid has for sure been infected with her pigheadedness. Bringing him into the gang, trying to reform the little Christer-schooled brat and instruct him in the hard truth of life as it can be found every day on the street, would be like Caesar adopting Judas before Judas stabs him in the back. Or whoever it was who stabbed Caesar, if it was Caesar who was stabbed and not the guy who fiddled while Rome burned, or maybe Paris. On Aleem’s favorite TV show, this hard-ass gang boss has an eighteen-year-old son who’s even more ruthless than his old man, but loyal, totally loyal. Aleem now sees that, in this case, life isn’t going to be like TV. John is a bent nail, bent so bad by his mother that he can’t ever be hammered straight enough to be of any use. Besides, the kid is on a baseball team. In Aleem’s opinion, baseball is a pussy sport no less than polo or volleyball. Real men are into football and basketball. Life is too short to take a kid to see baseball or to watch him pitch a game. And John takes piano lessons, which isn’t an instrument Aleem can approve. When he thinks piano, Aleem thinks Liberace, a dead dude his grandmother collects on vinyl, and he thinks Elton John. He doesn’t want his homeys getting the idea that the boy walks on the far side of the street. Fatherhood isn’t how TV paints it. Aleem fell for that TV-dad shit because he has a sentimental streak. A sentimental streak can get you killed. Put the bitch and the brat in a hole, fill it in, tamp it down, and then life can get back to normal.

Ahead and to the east, a sudden brightness is born in the dark. The beam paints detail on the featureless dark shape of Kuba before it shifts to Aleem’s face. As the light quickly slides down his body to pool at Aleem’s feet, Hakeem Makuda says, “We thought maybe you was them,” and he approaches with his main man, Carlisle Sharkey.

“Where you get a flashlight?” Aleem asks.

“We keep one in the Aviator just in case,” Carlisle says.

Hakeem’s worst character fault is a cockeyed sense of humor, revealed when he says, “A man can’t never be sure he won’t wind up in a dead orchard at night in a storm, his wheels broke down, and a bitch to find.”

“Happens often, do it?” Kuba asks, humoring Hakeem.

“Often enough so I don’t go nowheres without my bitch-finder, Carlisle. If he the last man on Earth and one woman left somewheres in France, Carlisle he’d smell her exact location.”

“And I’d know what to do with her,” Carlisle assures them.

Another light swells out of the trees to the west, and then yet another, as Jason James and his main man, Speedo Hickam, arrive to make it a quorum.

Orlando Fiske and Masud Ayoob have most likely returned to the highway to patrol the perimeter of the orchard.

“Everyone got damn flashlights,” Kuba says.

It’s obvious that, in addition to having flashlights, everyone is wearing hooded raincoats except for Kuba and Aleem.

Before anyone can comment on that, Aleem places the blame for his condition where it belongs. “Didn’t ’spect to be humpin’ around in the rain, huntin’ the bitch. We figured she’d be screwed at the roadblock.”

“She weren’t,” says Hakeem.

“No shit.”

Carlisle, who has no discernible sense of humor, says, “Wish I really could smell out the bitch, Aleem, but that’s just Hakeem bein’ stupid.”

Speedo Hickam says, “What the hell happened to our wheels, all gone dead at the same time?”

“We don’t know,” Kuba says.

“Carlisle favors a supernatural explanation,” says Hakeem.

“I said unnatural,” Carlisle corrects. “That don’t mean ghosts and shit. I ain’t that kind of fool.”

“What you sayin’ then?” Kuba asks. “Space aliens?”

“What I’m sayin’ is we don’t know what’s goin’ down here, we shouldn’t walk blind into it.”

“So just bone out, run away scared? You not talkin’ like a Vig now. That’s Blood talk, Crab talk.”

Crab is what they sometimes call a Crip, and Carlisle is offended. “Don’t be jammin’ me, Kuba. I ain’t no more scared of nothin’ than a tiger pisses himself he sees his shadow.”

Hakeem says, “That’s some tangle of words, bro. You got a translation?”