Hell To Pay

had to stop.

“How’s it goin?” said Strange.

“It’s all right. Name’s Lorenze. Most call me Lo. I’m Joe Wilder’s uncle.”

“Derek Strange. I’ve seen you around.”

Now Strange had to shake his hand. Lorenze rubbed his right hand, greasy from the french fries in the bag, off on his jeans before he reached out and tried to give Strange the standard soul shake: thumb lock, finger lock, break. Strange executed it without enthusiasm.

“Y’all nearly through?”

“We’ll be quittin’ near dark.”

“I just got up in this motherfucker, so I didn’t know how long you been out here.”

Lorenze smiled. Strange shifted his feet impatiently. Lorenze, a man over thirty years old, wore a T-shirt with a photograph of a dreadlocked dude smoking a fat spliff, and a pair of Jordans, laces untied, on his feet. Strange didn’t know one thing for certain about this man. But he knew this man’s type.

Blue called the boys off the bleachers. Exhausted, they began to walk back toward the center of the field.

“I’ll be takin’ Joe with me after practice,” said Lorenze. “I ain’t got my car tonight, but I can walk him back to his place.”

“I told his mother I’d drop him at home. Same as always.”

“We just gonna walk around some. Boy needs to get to know his uncle.”

“I’m responsible for him,” said Strange, keeping his tone light. “If his mother had told me you’d be comin’, that would be one thing . . .”

“You don’t have to worry. I’m kin, brother.”

“I’m taking him home,” said Strange, and now he forced himself to smile. “Like I say, I told his mother, right? You got to understand this.”

“I ain’t gotta do nothin’ but be black and die,” said Lorenze, grinning at his clever reply.

Strange didn’t comment. He’d been hearing young and not-so-young black men use that expression around town for years now. It never did settle right on his ears.

They both heard a human whistle and looked up past the bleachers to the fence that bordered the parking lot. A tall young man was leaning against the fence, smiling and staring down at them. Then he turned, walked away, and was out of sight.

“Look,” said Strange, “I gotta get something from my car. I’ll see you around, hear?”

Lorenze nodded absently.

Strange walked up to the parking lot. The young man who had stood at the fence was now sitting behind the wheel of an idling car with D.C. plates. The car was a beige Caprice, about ten years old, with a brown vinyl roof and chrome-reverse wheels, parked nose out about four spaces down from Strange’s own Chevy. Rust had begun to cancer the rear quarter panel on the driver’s side. The pipe coughed white exhaust, which hovered in the lot. The exhaust mingled with the marijuana smoke that was coming from the open windows of the car.

Another young man sat in the shotgun seat and a third sat in the back. Strange saw tightly braided hair on the front-seat passenger, little else.

Strange had slowed his steps and was studying the car. He was letting them see him study it. His face was impassive and his body language unthreatening as he moved along.

Now Strange walked to his own car and popped the trunk. He heard them laughing as he opened his toolbox and looked inside of it for . . . for what? Strange didn’t own a gun. If they were strapped and they were going to use a gun on him, he couldn’t do a damn thing about it anyway. But he was letting his imagination get ahead of him now. These were just some hard-looking kids, sitting in a parking lot, getting high.

Strange found a pencil in his toolbox and wrote something down on the outside of the Pee Wees’ manila file. Then he found the Midget file that he had come to get for Blue. He closed the trunk’s lid.

He walked back across the lot. The driver poked his head out the window of the Caprice and said, “Yo, Fred Sanford! Fred!”

That drew more laughter, and he heard one of them say, “Where Lamont at and shit?”

Now they were laughing and saying other things, and Strange heard the words “old-time” and felt his face grow hot, but he kept walking. He just wanted them gone, off the school grounds, away from his kids. And as he heard the squeal of their tires he relaxed, knowing that this was so.

He looked down toward the field and noticed that Lorenze, Joe Wilder’s uncle, had gone.

Strange was glad Terry Quinn hadn’t been with him just now, because Quinn would have started some shit. When someone stepped to him, Quinn only knew how to respond one way. You couldn’t answer each slight, or return each hard look with an equally hard look, because moments like this went down out here every day. It would just be too tiring. You’d end up in a constant battle, with no time to breathe, just live.

Strange told himself this, trying to let his anger subside, as he walked back onto the field.

chapter 6

THE Pee Wee offense said “Break” in the huddle and went to the line. Strange saw that several of the players had lined up too far apart.

“Do your splits,” said Strange, and the offensive linemen moved closer together, placing their hands on one another’s shoulder pads. Now they were properly spaced.

“Down!” said Dante Morris, his hands between the center’s legs. The offense hit their thigh pads in