Dirty South

You wide awake. You breathe hard through your nose. Sheets wet from sweatin’ all night without no AC.

“You betta calm the fuck down, boy,” the voice say. “You hear me? Ain’t no secrets. Ain’t nobody rip your ass off. You ain’t nothin’ but a liar. Lie to yourself. Lie in your mind.”

The hand ease off. You bite at the fingers but they gone like air.

You get tangled in the sheets and fight – seemin’ like with yourself – until you fall hard on the floor. You can feel. Not see. It’s 3. It’s 4. Ain’t no dawn in sight.

“Whay you at? Come on.” You swing into blindness, black night.

You still smell that funk-ass breath. You feel heat and sourness in your face.

The closet door still cracked to keep out those monsters and ghosts and shit like when you was a kid.

A flash of platinum. Your symbol. Your Superman S on the ground.

You kneel down in that long yellow sliver of closet light that cuts real narrow when it crosses your hands. You holdin’ the platinum.

“That’s mine, kid,” the voice say. “It too heavy for your neck.”

And into the cut of light, you see him.

You can’t breathe. You feel suspended in water, like when you in a pool and you don’t weigh nothin’. Your fingers and legs tingle. You got to hold yourself ’cause you feel you about to piss.

It’s the face from the bus. It’s God.

“Yeah, you right, my nigga,” he say. “Dio back.”

Your hand stretches from you, like you ain’t got no control, and offers that piece of jewelry to Dio, chain twisted up in your fingers. You just want him to go, take what’s his. He’s dead.

Sweat runs cold ’cross your neck.

“Malcolm kept pushin’ too,” Dio say. “Don’t be a hero.”

You close your eyes tight and open them to nothin’.

You hear footsteps runnin’ down that wide marble staircase. Hard feet.

You run to the top, look down, moon flowin’ like spilled milk onto your floors black and white and onto the bald head of a dead man.

Another man waitin’ for Dio.

He got a brown coat that seems to rot off him. Gray skin and yellow eyes.

You can’t move.

Your legs give out. Breath all tight, hands on the cold marble ground. You fight for that cool air, trying to find it. Needing that bubble.

When you get to your feet, they’re gone.

You wonder if you right in the head.

But that funk smell stays.

58

A KNOCK ON THE WAREHOUSE DOOR before 10 A.M. better mean something important. People have their summer rituals and for me it was about 9, a big bowl of Cap’n Crunch, and then maybe a Josie and the Pussycats marathon or some reruns of the Banana Splits. I knew someone had to be kidding by breaking the sacred tradition. I yawned, punched the intercom at the street, and politely asked, “It’s cartoon time. What?”

“Old School, let me up.”