Huey’s house hadn’t changed a lot in the years since our childhood abortively ended in that abandoned lot with a child’s body dropping at our feet, a gun smoking in my hand, and the gold-toothed grin of a blue-eyed gangsta. The porch’s wooden deck was warped and splintered from water damage and neglect and the patio overhead was sagging as if preparing to succumb to gravity and crash down upon me. The cracked windows, old blue and white paint that was peeling and flaking revealing the bare brick beneath, the front door that was so badly warped that you could see light from inside all around the edges of it, was all just as it had always been. Nothing had changed but our ages and my predicament.
Huey answered the door on the first ring. “What’s up, dog? You in trouble?”
He drew his Sig Sauer .40 from his waistband and cocked it, looking past me out the door. His eyes widened when he saw my Impala riddled with holes and then he did a double take when he noticed the baby in my arms.
“Where’d you get the kid, man? What’s goin’ down wit’ you? Somebody after you? You ain’t kidnap this kid did you?”
He looked at me with more concern than my own mother would have shown. Tears welled up in my eyes and I took a deep breath to clear them away and compose myself. From behind him I saw Iesha looking at me with critical eyes. Even at eight months pregnant she was just as beautiful as she’d been when I’d first met her back when I was ten years old. And I still loved her. Her eyes told me she didn’t reciprocate the emotion.
I felt terribly self-conscious and foolish.
“Look, man, maybe I shouldn’t have come. This is my shit. I’ll handle it. I didn’t mean to disrupt your evening and bring all this drama to your doorstep. My bad.”
Huey held my eyes with his and it was evident that he was dismissing everything I was saying. He could tell that I needed help.
“Go upstairs, Iesha. Me and Snap have some things to discuss.”
“Don’t let him talk you into no dumb shit! I don’t want to see you wind up like your brother.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Huey’s head whipped around like someone slammed the brakes on too fast in a speeding car.
“What the fuck did you just say to me?”
Iesha’s defiant eyes drifted to the floor and she started to stammer, clearly afraid.
“I-I was just saying…I love you and I just don’t want to see anything happen to you.”
“Go upstairs, Iesha. Now!”
His fierce stare pushed the pregnant young girl out of the room and up the stairs. This relationship couldn’t be healthy.
“What kinda trouble you in, my brother? Who did that to your car?”
I took a deep breath and slipped slowly to my knees as the weight of the evening, of everything I had to tell Huey before the night could end, overcame me. Huey lifted the child from my hands before my face hit the stained and tattered wool carpet.
“Scratch… Scratch is tryin’ to kill me. He’s tryin’ to kill me and the baby and…and I don’t even think he’s human.”
Huey’s eyes clouded over with that murderous rage smoldering just beneath his icy cold front. His hazel eyes darkened and narrowed into slits and his deep gravely voice came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Then we gotta do that White nigga first. If that fool wants to try and take you out then he’s gonna have to deal with my black ass. And I swear I’m gonna split that devil’s wig!”
— | — | —
Chapter 19
—Friedrich Nietzshe
««—»»
“So who’s the kid?”
Huey was standing above me holding the child. I must have passed out or something because I was laying on the couch looking up at him. I cupped my head in my hands as I rose to a sitting position.
“I must have been out of my fucking mind.”
Huey sat down next to me cradling the baby in his lap.
“So who is he? Where’s his parents?”
“I don’t know how to even begin explaining all of this.”
My head was still in my hands, refusing to look at Huey until I had the right words.
“Why don’t you start by telling me where you got this kid so I don’t think you’re some kind of child abductor or kidnapper or something with some perverted interest in babies. ’Cause then I will have to kick ya ass up out of my house.”
Huey’s voice lowered again to that gravely rumble, letting me know that he wasn’t joking.
“That baby…is Jesus Christ.”
“Fuck did you just say?”
Huey grabbed me by my shoulder and jerked me around to face him.
“I know this shit is going to sound off. I don’t know, maybe I just flipped out or something. Maybe I’m losing my mind. I mean, I was all set to blast them, both of them, the kid and his mom, then I got like this hallucination or revelation or something. I don’t know, dog. I don’t know.”
Huey leaned in closer, his voice softening.
“What did you see?”
“I saw Scratch’s face and— and he didn’t look human. It was like he turned into a demon right in front of my eyes and shit. I thought I saw his face tear away, burn away like the celluloid in those old movies that would get too close to the projector bulb and melt. And Yo, underneath his face, there was this other face. Satan’s face. A grinning devil. Then I looked down at this baby in my arms and I’m tellin’ you dog, it was Jesus Christ. There was no doubt in my mind that I was holding our savior in my arms about to blow his damn head off with Satan standing right at my side urging me on. It was like this moment of clarity, you know, like when you’re high and you ain’t makin’ no sense and then suddenly the fog clears and you can think straight. That’s what it felt like, like the fog had cleared and I could see everything for what it really was. And yo, Scratch ain’t fuckin’ human, dog! He’s some kind of fuckin’ monster. I’m tellin’ you, dog. He ain’t human!”
Huey was staring at me as if he was trying to decide whether to believe me or not. He looked down at the kid for a long time before he looked back up at me. His mouth kept opening and closing as he struggled to decide what to say.
“I don’t know, dog. That’s some deep shit. I mean, I can relate to Scratch being a devil and all that, I been telling you that all along, but not like…literally. Not like from hell, Prince of Darkness, Lord of Lies, and shit. That’s some other shit you on right there. And this little crack baby? Jesus Christ? I ain’t no Christian, but don’t that seem a little off to you? Jesus Christ showin’ up here? This ain’t exactly Jerusalem.”
“Yeah, that’s the part I can’t figure out. Why here and why me? But if none of this shit is real then why is Scratch tryin’ to kill me?”
“’Cause you fuckin’ shot at him, fool! ’Cause you don’t want to work for him no more. ’Cause he figures somebody from one of the other gangs flipped you and now you’re out to take him out. Or he thinks you went crazy after all the killin’ he’s had you doin’ for him and he’s afraid of you. Either way he figures you’re too dangerous to have around now. He’s got to kill you.”
I looked down at the baby. It was looking up at me intently as if it had something it wanted to say to me.
“I don’t know why I should care even if this is Christ. He ain’t our savior, never was. He saved the Jews and damned the Black man as far as I can tell. I mean, fuck has he ever done for my Black ass? Christ or Satan, fuck is
