What say?
You don’t know shit, Eddie snarled, emphasizing the curse word, excited to vent and test profanity out on an adult. You just trying to get some more wino wine.
I know what happen to yo’ mama, the man mutter-sang. Then, in a rambling, improvised song, he described Darlene, with enough identifying details—the handbag she carried, the type of shoes she wore, her hairstyle, the correct position of the most prominent mole on her face—that Eddie arched his back, readying himself to attack the man if, as he feared, the bum decided to lay insults on top of a description he now recognized as his mother. She real cute, he sang lasciviously. But she lost her teeth. Ain’t got no teeth! But she’s cute enough to hold. Yes, she a beaut! But only when her mouth be closed. He collapsed in laughter.
Eddie became a child again and rushed over to the bum. What? What happened? Where is she? She lost her teeth? How?
This here jaw don’t flap until it get loose, got it? Liquor store down that road. He gestured vaguely in a direction where there did not seem to be a street.
I’m twelve years old, Eddie protested.
I don’t give a fuck if you’s a embryo, nigger! Git! Wanna know where your mama at, don’tcha? By now Eddie had gotten near enough to smell a cloud of sour whiskey around him, body odor as pungent as a plate of raw onions.
Finding an adult to get liquor for him did not present so big a problem; he had heard many kids from school say they did so on a regular basis. The larger difficulty lay on the other side of that one—how could he find this wino again should he come across the liquor store and figure out how to buy the malt liquor the man demanded? What if he paid for the stuff and returned to find the guy gone? How to make sure this character, who came off so much like an evil spirit already, wouldn’t disappear?
How come you remember so much about my mom if you drunk all the time? Eddie asked.
Ain’t no fun remembering the shit that done happened to me, nigger, the bum slurred. Eddie felt the guy waiting for him to laugh, but he couldn’t.
They went back and forth this way for a while. Eddie tried to get the guy to come with him, but the bum would not rise. The boy considered taking his chances—after all, there’s nothing more pathetic than an alcoholic who can’t motivate himself enough to get his own booze. But uncovering a viable lead after so many dangerous weeks of searching made Eddie nervous enough to hyperventilate. The notion that this fellow might be the only obstacle between him and his mother gave him practically superhuman willpower and tenacity.
No matter how much the man insisted he wouldn’t go anywhere, Eddie couldn’t believe him. Not surprisingly, the man had nothing worth using as collateral.
Eventually, in the near distance, Eddie spotted a length of twine that had once held a large box closed and, with the bum’s grudging consent, tied his wrists first together and then to the landing gear of the trailer with a knot so haphazard that it would have no choice but to remain secure.
You gonna make my ass late for the presidential cotillion, the man said. ’Cause that’s where I’m planning to take the forties you bringing me.
Eddie walked away backward with the bike, watching carefully to make sure the man couldn’t escape, and he hid behind a sedan at one point to be certain the guy could not get away. Then he leapt on the bike and pedaled frantically until he reached the liquor-store parking lot.
After a few tries, he found a Houstonite by the local convenience store who seemed outwardly immoral. He told his story and offered up an inadequate five-dollar subsidy. The young guy bought him a pair of warhead-shaped bottles of piss-colored liquid in two paper bags inside a third plastic bag with handles, which Eddie slipped over one handlebar and rushed back to the lot to deliver.
He found the man kneeling by the trailer, in position for prayer but cursing, snarling, biting like an animal at the crazy knot. He claimed to know voodoo, boasted he was a high priest, threatened to lay a curse on Eddie to rival the one laid on Ham.
By Papa Legba, nigger, you’ll be a nigger forever, the man spat, and your whole kin gon be niggers. Black dark evil muddy-ass niggers, too dumb to know they own name and so black you can’t see em in the daytime. Lips so thick they gotta eat through a straw, nose so flat they can’t breathe, hair so bushy housecats’ll get lost in it.
Eddie set down the bags with the bottles in them and stood next to the man, attacking the bizarre tangle of twine, digging into its tight knots with his fingernails, tugging and severing it when nothing else would work. Once the man found himself free of the handcuffs, he fell on one of the paper bags and tore down the side to reveal the forty, which he did not waste time admiring but twisted open and guzzled three-quarters of before he settled down enough to acknowledge Eddie’s presence again.
With his eyes on the second, he slowed his sipping of the first and regarded his captor with a certain resentment, a resentment Eddie suddenly understood that he might never reverse, even if he managed to sweet-talk information out of the guy.
Yo’ mama got in the Death Van, the bum said, punching the word Death, almost laughing.
Death Van? Fuck you, you lying s—