Tangerine was quiet.
“That’s what I thought. I ain’t gonna pretend to know how hard this is for you, but you gotta know there is only one way this ends. It’s either him or us. All us,” Ike said. He turned down Crab Thicket Road. Jazzy’s trailer was the last one on the left.
“Us? We’re an ‘us’ now? You didn’t want nothing to do with your own son, but now I’m supposed to believe I’m a part of the team?” Tangerine said. The words shot out of her mouth like shrapnel.
“You on the team because I can’t let what happened to Isiah and Derek happen to anybody else. I ain’t gonna lie and say I get you, because I don’t. I can’t even pretend I know what it must be like to be … you. But if all this has taught me one thing, it’s that it ain’t about me and what I get. It’s about letting people be who they are. And being who you are shouldn’t be a goddamn death sentence,” Ike said.
“I think about Isiah and Derek a lot. If I had just kept my fucking mouth shut they would still be alive. Now my mama is dead, too. I can’t do this anymore,” Tangerine said as Ike passed a field full of hay bales being loaded on a flatbed truck. The sun was setting quick, and the men in the field were moving fast to beat old Sol before he vanished behind the horizon. The sky was full of ambers and magentas that ran together like melted wax.
Ike pulled into a long driveway covered in crushed oyster shells that was lined on both sides by a throng of blackberry thickets and wild daylilies, their orange petals standing out in sharp contrast to the verdant green leaves of the blackberry bushes. At the end of the driveway was a white double-wide with red shutters. Jazzy’s car was the only one in the front yard. Ike pulled alongside it and cut the engine.
“I’m sorry,” Ike said.
“Don’t say that. Don’t say that because you trying to butter me up,” Tangerine said.
“No, I mean … I know you didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But it did and now this is where we at. A man once told me we can’t change the past but we can decide what happens next. That’s where you at right now,” Ike said. He got out of the truck.
“Come on. Let me introduce you to Jazzy.”
“You sure she ain’t gonna mind having me here?” Tangerine said. She was still in the truck.
“I’m thinking she’ll be okay with it. She ain’t a dinosaur like me. And her and Isiah were good friends in school. She knew he was … gay a long time before I did, and she never turned her back on him,” Ike said.
“I told you, I’m not gay,” Tangerine said.
“Jazzy is as close as we gonna get to an ally in Red Hill County,” Ike said. Tangerine took her good hand away from her face. She used it to open the door. She followed Ike over the stepping stones to the front door of the double-wide.
* * *
Buddy Lee used the neck of the bottle of beer he was drinking to move the curtain of his living room window aside. The sun was dipping lower than a ballroom dancer. The tribe of country critters began to chant their nightly prayers. Frogs, crickets, and mockingbirds all sang songs of praise to their various gods.
A cough seized his chest like the pincers of a blue crab. Dots danced in front of his face as he tried to force the sputum and phlegm out of his rotting lungs. A strong hand slapped his back. Buddy Lee put his hand against his mouth and caught what his lungs had tried to hoard.
“Thank you. Got a bit of a bug in my throat,” Buddy Lee said. He didn’t want to wipe the blood and spit on his pants, but he also didn’t want Mya to see it. Her smooth, impassive face appraised him with the cool detachment of a woman who had heard her share of death rattles.
“Cancer? Or emphysema?” she asked.
“Can I have a tissue?” Buddy Lee asked. Mya went to the kitchen and came back with a paper towel. Buddy Lee wiped his hand, then balled it up and put it his pocket.
“Just a bug in my throat,” Buddy Lee said. Mya put her hands on her hips. She seemed ready to call him a liar. Instead she shook her head reproachfully and sat down on the couch with Arianna. Buddy Lee peered out the window again.
Come on, Ike, Buddy Lee thought.
* * *
Jazzy waved to Ike as he backed out of the driveway. They’d given Tangerine a sleeping pill and put her in the back bedroom. Tangerine had been nervous about Marcus coming home and kicking her out, but Jazzy had assured her it would be fine.
“Girl, as long as he got his Call of Duty and a bag of potato chips, he don’t give a damn what’s going on. He probably won’t even notice you here,” Jazzy had said. Once they had put Tangerine in the bed, Ike had questioned how confident she was in that assertion.