I fell back a step while he and Mouse faced off.
‘You ain’t got the right t’say her name, boy. She up ev’ry night worried ‘bout you an’ who knows what you doin’, or where? She worried herself sick an’ then she died an’ who you think brought it on?’ There were tears in Reese’s eyes. ‘She died askin’ fo’you. It broke my heart, an’ where was you? You weren’t nowhere. Nowhere. An’ my girl layin’ in that bed all yellah an’ sick ‘cause she so worried ‘bout a rotten chile like you...’
‘What good it gonna do, huh?’ Mouse shouted. ‘I’s barely a teenager an’ you come after me wit’ sticks an’ fists. What good it gonna do her t’see you beat me?’
‘You was a rotten boy, Raymond, an’ you’s a rotten man. You kilt her an’ now you want my money, but I see you dead fo’ I give up a dime.’
‘I kilt’er? You the one. You the one ravin’ ‘bout how yo’ boy so good an’ how I ain’t even legal. You the one beat on her an’ beat on me which hurt her even more cause my momma was a good woman an’ you is the devil! The devil, you hear?’ Mouse reached in the back of his pants for the second time that day. He pulled out that long- barrelled .41 and blasted that poor shivering dog. Then he shot the other three: crack, crack, crack; like ducks in an arcade. Reese hit the ground thinking that Mouse was gunning for him.
‘I’ma have what’s mines,’ Mouse said as he brought the bead down on Reese.
‘You can kill me an’ you can take my soul but I ain’t gonna give you a drop’a what’s mine!’
‘Raymond!’ I shouted. ‘Let it go, man! You cain’t get nuthin’ like this. Let it go.’
Mouse lifted the barrel a hair and shot over Reese’s head, then he turned to me and said, ‘We better get outta here.’
We went fast down the way we had come.
Half a mile down, Mouse stopped and pulled the baby doll from his jacket. He took out a string and tied it roughly around the doll’s neck and then he hung the doll from a branch so that it dangled down over the centre of the road.
‘He gonna come down here with that shotgun but you know he gonna be stopped by this,’ Mouse said loudly, to himself.
We took so many turns and shortcuts that I was lost. I think Mouse was lost too, because when it started getting dark he said, ‘We cain’t get nowhere’s good t’night, Ease. We better find some shelter.’
Nothing could’ve sounded worse to me. When we were running I’d started coughing and it wouldn’t go away. I was feverish and dizzy and I wanted my bed and my room in Houston more than anything.
‘Ain’t they noplace?’
‘Uh-uh, Ease. Anyway, I want to go to ground. Reese is good at night.’
He left me to rest next to a dead oak and went out looking for shelter. While I sat there, beginning to fade into my fever, I saw a barn owl glide through the low branches. It moved fast and silent and it never hit a twig, it was so sure. I thought to myself that some rabbit was going to die that night, then I started to shake; whether it was from the fear of mortality or chills I didn’t know.
‘There’s a lea some hunter musta used just a ways down, Ease,’ Mouse said when he returned.
‘What if Reese use it?’
‘He ain’t likely to be in no lea t’night. If he go out huntin’ it’a be wide awake.’
We laid side by side in that flat tent of leaves and baling wire. The grippe came full on me.
‘Wh-what you kill them dogs fo’?’
Raymond put his arm around me and held on tight to keep me from shivering. He said, ‘Shhh, Easy, you sick. Git some sleep and in the mo’nin’ you be fine.’
‘I-I-I just wanna know why. Why you kill them dogs?’
I felt like a cranky baby half napping on a Sunday afternoon.
‘I was mad, that’s all, Ease,’ Mouse whispered. ‘Reese talk ‘bout my momma like that an’ I’m like to kill’im.’
‘But them dogs didn’t hurt you.’
‘Go t’sleep now, Easy. Shh.’
I never knew Mouse to be so gentle. He held me all night and kept me warm as much as he could. Who knows? Maybe I would’ve died out there in Pariah if Mouse hadn’t held me to his black heart.
Chapter Seven
When I woke up things seemed better. Dew weighed heavily on the grass and leaves around us. It was bright and early. A jay stood not five feet from us with a grasshopper crumpled in its beak. The jay looked at me and for some reason that made me happy.
I could smell Mouse’s sour breath from over my shoulder; there was a tiny wheeze coming from him. Dead dogs and crazy family were far away for the moment. I felt a cough coming on but I stifled it to stay quiet just a little longer.
‘You ‘wake, Easy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How you feel?’
I tried to say ‘fine’ but that started me coughing.
When I finally stopped Mouse crawled out of the lea and said, ‘We better get you someplace inside so you can
