Daren Dean

Mercury in Retrograde 5

Troy

Saturday morning they drove down Court Street toward the square, passed all the rich and well-to-do people's houses, and dreamed of moving in there beside them along the live oaks and rose bushes. The groaning sound of a lawn mower started up. An elderly man and woman were talking over the hedge line dividing their lawns while a little terrier did his business a few feet away. Old man Williams who ran the Ford dealership downtown was shining up his Fairlane GT in front of his house. King Henry's impulse was to ram Williams with his Chevelle and he did jerk the steering wheel in his direction. Williams's face went apoplectic with fear and rage until the Chevelle pulled back plumb. Troy Scofield gave King Henry a crooked grin.

"Williams got boo-coo bucks," King Henry said.

"I worked for him down to the garage for awhile," Troy said. "But I had to quit. It was either quit or whip his ass."

"Why?"

"We just got into a big fizz is all," Scofield said. "Where you get the money to dress the way you do? People'd think you belong to the country club."

"Oh," King Henry smiled. "I've got an idea or two."

King Henry turned the car down a narrow lane, abruptly leaving the manicured loans behind where gradually the homes became older and shabbier. They passed an old laundramat, railroad tracks where the government housing projects began, as young black men stared defiantly and bending slightly at the knees to see through their car windows. He drove down one of the streets with the rows of tan bricks stood like tombstones, only the people in them thought they still lived.

"They come running out of these places like I'm the fuckin' ice cream man," King Henry smiled.

"So?" Troy asked.

"Well," King Henry took a wad of sweaty bills from a black man in a multi-colored headdress made from what could have been rags and handed him a quarter bag of marijuana. "I've got higher aspirations than being the ice cream man."

King Henry's expression took on the quality of an augur holding a magic eight ball as he looked down the potted streets and the men coming toward his car to buy his product. Two men walked unsteadily, leaning on one another for support. Troy kept his window rolled up, occasionally he drank from the can of Budweiser shoved between his legs and smoked cigarettes. A short black man with the enormous arms of a body builder and a football jersey came up to the driver door.

"There he is," the muscle bound man said clutching at the driver's sleeve. "The King himself. Long live the King! What's up, nigger?"

"Nothing but the rent, like the man said. What you been up to? Looks like you've been pumping some iron, Baptiste."

"Just got out of state for probation," the man flexed his bicep. "Them motherfuckers afraid to mess with a hoss like me."

"I can see that."

"You got some of my stuff?"

"Sure," King Henry made an exchange, money for a plastic baggy.

"Who that?" Baptiste asked, nodding toward Troy brooding silently and flexing and unflexing his fist.

"You don't want none of that, believe me."

"I been kicking the shit out of crackers like him since I was old enough to walk," Baptiste said.

"Let me explain something to you," King Henry began. "You like to fight. Now, you take this motherfucker here. He likes violence. He'll kill your ass."

"Who he kill?"

"Shut the fuckup, Finkenbinder," Troy growled, barely raising his voice above a whisper so that King Henry knew what he said by facial expression and the way his lips moved.

"Aw man," King Henry said. "I'm fucking with you. He's my cousin."

"I gotta go do my thing," Baptiste said. "The ladies will miss me."

"What ladies?" King Henry asked. "Your Nana and Mama Horne?"

"Fuck you," Baptiste smiled, slapping the door of the car.

Baptiste strutted away. A teenaged girl came up to him and grabbed his arm, one hand massaging a bicep.

"You ever had you a black girl before? They really got it in bed. Good rhythm. Some of those white country club girls just lay there while you fuck 'em. Not them though . . . "

"I don't believe in that race mixing shit. That ain't how I was raised to believe."

"Well, where I'm from you ain't got much choice," King Henry said. "You should widen your horizons. You got laid every once in a while and you probably wouldn't be so pent up and tense all the damn time."

"Can we get out of the projects?"

A clock chimed at the college. The bell tolled twice.

"Tolls for thee," Troy mumbled.

"What?"

"Must be two, is what I said."

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March 5, 2010