* * *
—
Charles cut a mean figure at six foot four, two forty, with broad shoulders and big-ass hands. Charles’s Chucks went up on the coffee table. Carlos put his feet up too, turned the TV on.
“Have a seat, Calvin,” Charles said to me.
“I’m good,” I said.
“Are you though?” Carlos said, clicking through channels.
“It’s been a while,” Charles said. “It’s been a long fucking while I would say. Where you been? Vacation? Must be nice. Hiding out like this. Home-cooked meals, kid running around. Playing house. With our fucking sister. What the fuck is that? I have to say, I can’t help but wonder where all that money you’re saving goes, with you being up in here rent free. Right?”
“You know you’re not paying rent,” Carlos said.
“But you got a job,” Charles said. “You’re making money. That money should be in my fucking pocket yesterday. In Octavio’s. You’re lucky you’re my little brother, you know that? You’re lucky I haven’t told no one I know where the fuck you run off to. But I can only take so much of that shit.”
“I told you I’d have it. Why you gotta come unannounced and shit. And keep acting like you didn’t have something to do with that shit at the powwow.” I’d gotten robbed in the parking lot before I could even go in. I shouldn’t have brought the shit with me. The pound I had then. But then I wasn’t sure if I did bring it. Or did Charles put it in my glove box? I was smoking too much then. My memory was a fucking slide shit that happened to me went down and didn’t come back up from.
“Okay. You got me. You hit the nail on the fucking head. I should never have left. You’re right. I should hustle, and pay Octavio back for some shit I got stolen from me by his homies. So thank you. You’re really helping me out here, brother,” I said. “But I can’t help but wonder why you told me I should go check out that powwow at Laney. See about our Native heritage and shit. You said Mom would have wanted us to go. You said you would meet me there. And I can’t help but wonder if you didn’t know what the fuck was coming for me in that parking lot. What I can’t get my head around is why. What’s your interest? Is it to keep me around? ’Cuz I was talking about giving that shit up? Or did your stupid ass smoke all your shit up and need mine to not come up short?”
Charles stood and took a step toward me, then stopped and made his hands into fists. I opened my hands and raised them in a take-it-easy gesture, then took two steps back. Charles took another step toward me, then looked over to Carlos. “Let’s go for a drive,” he said to Carlos, who stood and turned off the TV. I watched them walk out in front of me. I looked back down the hall toward Sonny’s room. My right eye twitched involuntarily. “Let’s go,” I heard Charles say from out front.
* * *
—
Charles drove a dark blue custom-made four-door Chevy El Camino. The thing was clean like he just washed it that afternoon, which he probably did. Guys like Charles were always washing their cars, keeping their shoes and hats clean as new.
Before Charles started the car, he fired up a blunt and passed it to Carlos, who took two hits off it then passed it back to me. I took one long hit and passed it back up. We drove down San Leandro Boulevard deep into Deep East Oakland. I didn’t recognize the beat that was playing, something slow and bass-y, something that came mostly from beneath the backseat, from the subwoofer. I noticed Charles and Carlos were just barely nodding their heads to the music. Neither of them would ever admit that they were dancing, bobbing their heads like that, but they were kind of dancing, dancing in the smallest possible way, but dancing, and I thought it was hella funny, and I almost laughed, but then realized a few minutes later that I was doing it with them, and it wasn’t funny, and I realized how high I was. This was some other shit, what they smoked, could have been fucking angel dust sprinkled on, they called that KJ. Shit, knowing them that’s exactly why I couldn’t stop my head from bobbing, and why the streetlights were so fucking bright, and mean seeming, and, like, too red. I was glad I only hit it once.
* * *
—
We wound up in the kitchen of someone’s house. The walls were all bright yellow. Muffled mariachi music boomed through the room from the backyard. Charles gestured for me to sit down at a table I had to slide behind, like a booth, with Carlos to my left, tapping his fingers to some other beat he was hearing in his own head. Charles was across from me, staring straight at me.