“Get what?”
“Get that what’s normal ain’t up to me. That it don’t fucking matter who he wanted to wake up next to as long as he was waking up,” Buddy Lee said. Ike drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.
“I went up for manslaughter. My homie got taken out, so I went and found the boy who gave the go-ahead and I beat him to death in his mama’s backyard. Stomped that boy right into the ground. I thought I was standing up for my crew. But they didn’t stand up for me. I got inside and found out I was on my fucking own. So when four brothers tried to jump me and make me their cell-block bitch, I had to get on with a new crew,” Ike said. He flexed his hand.
“I did some foul-ass shit to get this tat. But I needed the backup. The boy I killed was hooked up with the East Side Crips. That’s why I joined the Black Gods. I was scared. A lot of what I did back then was because I was scared. But all those things I had to do fucked me up in the head,” Ike said.
“I saw things inside, too. I get what you saying. In there you can’t be soft or they knock out your front teeth and make you put your hair in pigtails and sell you for a box of smokes. But everything about prison is all the way fucked up, man. People ain’t supposed to live like that,” Buddy Lee said.
“I never could shake it, ya know? It’s like it made me look at everything through convict eyes. He came out the day he and Derek graduated from college. We had a cookout at the house. Had a lot of people over there. My sister Sylvia was there with her husband. People from work. I was at the grill burning it up, ya know? And he brought Derek over. I remember he took his hand. And I pretended like I didn’t see it, and Isiah starts saying ‘Dad, I have to tell you something,’ and I just keep flipping them goddamn burgers because I know what he is gonna say and I don’t want to hear, and he says ‘Dad, Derek isn’t just my friend. He’s my boyfriend. Dad, I’m gay. I’m gay and I love him,’” Ike said. He took a deep breath.
“I fucking lost it. I went crazy. I flipped the grill over. Food and charcoal went everywhere. A piece of charcoal landed on Isiah’s arm, burned him pretty bad. I said … I said some terrible shit. To him and Derek. Mya was crying and yelling at me. People was staring at me like I was an animal. I was mad as hell. Embarrassed. I went inside and slammed the door so hard the glass broke,” Ike said.
“And all I kept thinking was why did he have to tell me? Why that day? Why couldn’t he have kept that to himself? I didn’t need to know that shit, right? I kept making it all about me. Took me years to understand he told me because even though we didn’t get along, he wanted me to know he was happy. He wanted to share that with me, and I fucked it up. I let him down,” Ike said. The lump in his throat felt like he had swallowed a brick. Buddy Lee cleared his throat.
“Neither one of us was Howard Cunningham. And still the boys made something of themselves. They were good to their friends, good to each other, good to that little girl. Even with daddies like us they grew up to be good men. No matter how many times we let them down, they came out alright,” Buddy Lee said.
Ike shook his head. “We gonna find Tangerine. We gonna find who did this. We’re done letting them down.”
* * *
Forty-five minutes later they passed a large black wooden sign with bright-green letters that spelled out BOWLING GREEN. The truck began to lose, then gain, power. Ike put the pedal to the floor. The engine whined like a newborn.
“We need some gas,” Buddy Lee said. Ike saw a gas station with two pumps up ahead on the right. He pulled in and rolled up to the pump just as the engine died.
“The gas hand says you have a quarter tank left,” Ike said.
“What can I tell ya? Shit don’t work like it used to. That goes for the truck and the owner,” Buddy Lee said. He got out and stretched his arms to the sky. His back snapped, crackled, and popped like a bowl of Rice Krispies.
“I’ll get the gas if you pump it. I need a beer,” Buddy Lee said.
“Hey, get me one, too,” Ike said. Buddy Lee raised his eyebrow. “Been a long day.”
Buddy Lee limped across the parking lot and entered the store. He grabbed a Busch tallboy can for himself and got Ike a Budweiser. He sat the beer on the counter.
“Let me get, uh, twenty-five on pump seven,” Buddy Lee said. The clerk, an older white woman with a mop of unruly gray hair, bagged his beer and rang up the gas.
“$29.48,” she said. Buddy Lee figured she must have been smoking since she was a fetus. He handed her two twenties.