“So, you scared to get your hands dirty? Or you don’t care that the man who killed our sons is walking around free?” Ike’s face settled into a rigid mask. Under his desk his hands curled into fists.
“You think I don’t care? I had to bury my only child in a closed casket service because the mortician couldn’t put his face back together. My wife wakes up crying in the middle of the night screaming Isiah’s name. I look at his daughter and realize she won’t remember what his voice sounded like. I wake up every morning and I go to bed every night praying he didn’t go from this world hating me. You see some tattoos and all the sudden you an expert on who the fuck I am? You don’t know nothing about me, man. What, you thought you’d walk in here and get the big, scary-ass Black nigga to go kill some people for you?”
Buddy Lee could see the muscles in Ike’s neck standing out in sharp relief like a 3D map. His pupils had narrowed to pinpricks. Buddy Lee leaned forward.
“Not some people. The bastards that killed Derek and Isiah. And I wasn’t asking you to do it for me. We can get more than one gun,” Buddy Lee said.
“Get the fuck out my office,” Ike said. The words came out slow and brutal, like cinder blocks being dragged over asphalt. Buddy Lee didn’t move. He and Ike locked eyes, and Buddy Lee felt the air between them change. It was charged like a thunderstorm was on the horizon. Buddy Lee dug around in his pocket until he found an old receipt. He grabbed one of Ike’s pens. He scrawled his cell phone number on the back of the receipt. He folded it once before laying it on Ike’s desk. He stood and walked to the door of the cubicle. He stopped and looked back at Ike.
“When you go to bed tonight and you’re praying your boy didn’t hate you, listen real close. You’ll hear him asking why you didn’t do something to make it right. When you ready to answer him, you give me a call. If you don’t, then I guess you should cover that lion up with a big fat pussy,” Buddy Lee said. He stomped out of the cubicle.
* * *
Ike heard the door chime go off as Buddy Lee left the building.
He brought his fists from under the desk. His breath was coming in short shallow bursts. Ike raised his arms and slammed his fists down on the desk. The pen holder jumped and skidded off the desk. Ike slammed his fists into the desk again and this time the laptop did a little jig.
That white boy had the nerve to sit there and tell him he didn’t care about Isiah. He should have fed him his fucking teeth. Ike got up and walked out of the cubicle. He stood in the middle of the warehouse flexing his fingers, trying to work the stinging sensation out of his hands.
Did Buddy Lee really think he was the only one who was hurting? He didn’t have a monopoly on grief. There wasn’t a moment that went by he didn’t think about Isiah. Every day it got a little bit harder and a little bit easier. Whenever the pain ebbed slightly he felt guilty. Like he was disrespecting Isiah’s memory if he didn’t feel an agonizing ache in his chest every single second. The days it got harder he sat in the shed and drank until he could hardly stand.
He should have jumped across his desk and snatched Buddy Lee’s skinny ass up out of his chair. Pushed him up against the wall of his office and pressed his forearm across his throat. Ike could have told him how in his dreams he found the people who had blown off Isiah’s face. He could have told Buddy Lee about how in those dreams he took those people some place nice and quiet. A place stocked with pliers and hammers and a blowtorch. Ike could have told him how in his dreams he introduced them to Riot Randolph. The OG with nine bodies on him, not including the one that had gotten him a manslaughter charge.
Ike massaged his temples. He hadn’t been that man in a long time. Not since June 23, 2004. That was the day he’d left Coldwater State Penitentiary. Ike had walked through those gates and found strangers waiting for him. A wife that had taken company with other men. A son, more man than boy, who wouldn’t look him in the eye. Strangers he loved who flinched at his touch.
He’d made up his mind the first night he was home. He was done. He was getting out of the life. As far as he was concerned, Riot had died in prison. Ike sacrificed him for his family. Just like Abraham had attempted to do to his namesake. At first no one in town wanted to believe it. The first couple of months he was home, crackheads would still sidle up to him asking if he was holding. For years the Red Hill Sheriff’s Department made pulling him over and searching his car their favorite hobby. People in the grocery store alternately gave him a wide berth and the side-eye. He ignored them all. He kept his head down and his eyes on the prize. He started a lawn-care service with a rickety riding mower and a rusty sling blade. He didn’t just work hard, he worked harder than anyone in five counties. By the time Isiah had graduated from college he’d paid off the house and the warehouse.