Hard Candy

born human kept fires burning all night long.

I pulled up to the junkyard gate. Left him in the car while I reached my hand through a gap in the razor-wire to open the lock.

We drove inside and stopped. I got back out and relocked the gate. Climbed back inside, rolled down the window. Lit a smoke.

'What do we do now?'

'We wait.'

The dogs came. A snarling pack, swarming around the car.

'Damn! Belle's here?'

'She's here.'

The Mole lumbered through the pack, knocking the dogs out of his way as he walked, like he always does. He came up to my open window, peered inside at the man in the front seat.

'This is him?'

'Yeah.'

He clapped his hands together. Simba came out of the blackness. A city wolf, boss of the pack. The beast stood on his hind legs, forepaws draped over the windowsill, looking at the man like he knew him. A low, thick sound came out of the animal, like his throat was clogged.

'We walk from here,' I told the man.

His eyes were hard, no fear in them. 'I ain't walkin' anywhere, boy. I don't like none a this.'

'Too bad.'

'Too bad for you, boy. You look real close, you'll see my hand ain't empty.'

I didn't have to look close. I knew what he'd have in his satchel- they don't use metal detectors on the Greyhound.

The dirty pile of blankets in the back of the Plymouth changed shape. The man grunted as he felt the round steel holes against the back of his neck.

'Your hole card is a low card, motherfucker.' The Prophet's voice, low and strong for such a tiny man. 'I see your pistol and raise you one double-barreled scattergun.'

'Toss it on the seat,' I told him. 'Don't be stupid.'

'Where's Belle? I came to see Belle.'

'You'll see her. I promise.'

His pistol made a soft plop on the front seat. The Mole opened his door. The man got out, the Prof's shotgun covering him. I walked around to his side of the car. 'Let's go,' I told him, my voice quiet.

We walked through the junkyard until we came to a clearing. 'Have a seat,' I said, pointing toward a cut-down oil drum. Taking a seat myself, lighting a smoke.

He sat down, reaching out a large hand to snatch at the pack of smokes I tossed over to him.

'What now?'

'We wait,' I said.

Terry stepped into the clearing. A slightly built boy wearing a set of dirty coveralls. 'That him?' he asked.

I nodded. The kid lit a smoke for himself, watching the man. The dog pack watched too. With the same eyes.

The Mole stumbled up next to me, the Prof at his side. The little man supported himself on a cane, the scattergun in his other hand.

'Pansy!' I called out. She lumbered out of the darkness, a Neapolitan mastiff, a hundred and forty pounds of power. Her black fur gleamed blue in the faint light, cold gray eyes sweeping the area. She walked toward the tall man, a steamroller looking at fresh-poured tar.

'Jump!' I snapped at her. She hit the ground, her eyes pinning the man where he sat.

I looked around one more time. All Belle's family was in that junkyard. All that was left, except for Michelle. And she'd already done her part.

The Prophet handed me a pistol. 'Here's the sign- now's the time.' I stood up.

'They got the death penalty in Florida?' I asked the man.

'You know they do.'

'They got it for incest?'

His eyes flickered. He knew. 'Where's Belle? Let me talk to her!'

'Too late for that. She's gone. In the same ground you're standing on.'

'I never did nothin' to you…'

'Yeah, you did. I don't have a speech for you. You're dead.'

'I got people know where I am.'

The Prophet smiled at him. 'Motherfucker, you don't even know where you are.'

'You want the kid to see this?' I asked the Mole.

Light played on the thick lenses of his glasses. 'He watched her die.'

I cocked the pistol.

He kept his voice low. Reasonable. 'Look, if I owe, I can pay. I'm a man who pays his debts.'

'You couldn't pay the interest on this one,' I told him.

'Hey! I got money, I can…'

'I'm not the Parole Board,' I said. The pistol cracked. He jerked backwards off the oil drum. I fired twice more, watching his body jump as each bullet went home.

The Prophet hobbled over to him. The shotgun spoke. Again.

I looked at the body for a dead minute.

We bowed our heads.

Pansy howled at the dark sky, grief and hate in one voice. The pack went silent, hearing her voice.

I didn't feel a thing.

3

AFTER THE COPS took Belle off the count, I thought about dying too. Thought about it a lot. The Prophet told me the truth.

'If there's something out there past this junkyard, she'll be waiting for you, brother.'

'And if there's not?'

'Then what's your hurry?'

'I feel dead inside me,' I told the little man with the hustler's soul and the lion's heart. The man who helped raise me inside the walls. Everyone called him the Prof. I thought it was short for Professor- he knew and he taught. But Prophet was the true root. A man who sees the truth sees the future. He showed me both- showed me how to be a man.

Or whatever it is that I am.

'You know what to do with it,' he told me.

I knew. Survive is what I knew. What I know. The only tune I know how to play.

Down here, we have rules. We made them ourselves. Feeling dead inside me- that was a feeling. It wouldn't bring Belle back to me- wouldn't get me closer. But making somebody dead…that was a debt.

Belle's father. The maggot who made her older sister into her mother. He loaded her genetic dice. She never had a chance. Her mother died so she could run, and she ran until she died.

I was holding her in my arms when she went, torn to pieces by bullets she took for me. She looked it in the eye when it came for her.

4