Hell To Pay

“Outside,” said Potter.

The older man followed Potter into the daylight, not too fast but without protest. Potter led him around the garage’s outer wall, which faced the neighboring yards to the west.

“What’s your name?”

“Edward Diggs.”

“Call you Digger Dog, right?”

“Some do.”

“Lorenze called you that when we sold him that hydro a few weeks back. You were standing right next to him. Remember me now?”

Diggs said nothing, and Potter moved forward so that he was looking down on Diggs and just a few inches from his face. Diggs’s back touched the garage wall.

“So where your boy Lorenze at?”

“I don’t know. He stays in his mother’s old house —”

“Over off North Dakota. I know where that is, and he ain’t been there awhile. Leastways, I ain’t caught him in. He got a woman he cribs with on the side?”

Diggs avoided Potter’s stare. “Not that I know.”

“What about other kin?”

Diggs took a long final drag off his cigarette and dropped it to the ground, crushing it beneath his sneaker. He looked to his right, out in the alley, but there was no one there. Everyone had gone inside the garage. Potter spread one tail on his shirt and draped it back behind the butt of the Colt, so that Diggs could see.

Diggs shifted his eyes again and lowered his voice. He had to give this boy something, just so he’d go away. “Lorenze got a sister. She be livin’ down in Park Morton with her little boy.”

“Maybe I’ll drop by. What’s her name?”

“I wouldn’t . . . What I’m sayin’ is, you want my advice—”

Potter open-handed Diggs across the face. He used his left hand to bunch Diggs’s shirt at the collar, then yanked Diggs forward and slapped him again.

Diggs said nothing, his body limp. Potter held him fast.

“What’s the sister’s name?”

Diggs’s eyes had teared up. He hated himself for that. All he meant to do was advise this boy, tell him, don’t fuck with Lorenze’s sister or her kid. But it was too late for all that now.

“I don’t know her name,” said Diggs. “And anyway, Lorenze, he don’t never go by the way or nothin’. He don’t talk to his sister much, way I understand it. Sometimes he watches her kid play football; boy’s on this tackle team. But that’s as close as he gets to her.”

“Where the kid play at?”

“Lorenze said the kid practices in the evenings at some high school.”

“Which school?”

“He live in Park Morton, so it must be Roosevelt. It ain’t but a few blocks up the street there—”

“I ain’t asked you for directions, did I? I live up on Warder Street my own self, so you don’t need to be drawin’ me a map.”

“It ain’t too far from there, is all I was sayin’.”

Potter’s eyes softened. He smiled and released his grip on Diggs. “I didn’t hurt you none, did I? ’Cause, look, I didn’t mean nothin’, hear?”

Diggs straightened his collar. “I’m all right.”

“Let me get one of those cigarettes from you, black.”

Diggs reached into his breast pocket and retrieved his pack of Kools. A cigarette slid out into his palm. He handed the cigarette to Potter.

Potter snapped the cigarette in half and bounced the halves off Diggs’s chest. Potter’s laugh was like a bark. He turned and walked away.

Diggs straightened his shirt and stepped quickly down the alley. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Potter had turned the corner. Diggs reached into his pocket and shook another cigarette out from a hole he had torn in the bottom of the pack.

Diggs’s boy Lorenze was staying with this girl he knew over in Northeast. Lorenze had kind of laughed it off, said he’d crib with that girl until Potter forgot about the debt. Didn’t look to Diggs that Potter was the type to forget. But he was proud he hadn’t given Lorenze up. Most folks he knew didn’t credit him for being so strong.

Diggs struck a match. He noticed that his hand was shaking some as he fired up his cigarette.

BACK in the garage, Potter sidled up next to Little. The owner of the garage, also the house bookie, stood nearby, holding the cash and taking late bets.

In one corner of the pen, Charles White finished sponging Trooper down with warm, soapy water. Diesel’s owner, in the opposite corner, did the same. Many dogs were treated with chemicals that could disorient the opponent. The rule in this arena was that both dogs had to be washed prior to a fight.

White scratched the top of Trooper’s head, bent in, and uttered random words into his ear with a soothing