East ducked. But Michael was quick. He got an arm around and slugged East’s kidneys: East felt that bitter spurt inside. “Come on, Easy,” Michael grunted, wrapping East with his long arms. East grappled for footing. Stay up, you had to: the pavement was not your friend.
Michael Wilson tried harder. He wrenched sideways, lifted East around the ribs, trying to slam him. East spread his feet wide to catch himself. Michael sucked air, swore, and spun again. Again East got a foot down, fought to stay upright. Walter bounced by, shouting wildly. Michael’s arms cinched, and East smelled his lotion. One fist peeled off and shot up, off his eye this time. At once he felt it throb and swell. With hard nails, Michael probed East’s head; he took the ear and started to twist, to tear at it, until East let go a shriek. Then everything stopped.
Silent: the silence of hard, wet breathing. Something black and cold teased East’s face, like a dog’s nose. Ty had a small gun leveled at him, lazy and straight.
“Quit it,” Ty said. Aiming the gun as if it didn’t even hold his attention.
Michael Wilson cursed. He popped East free, right into Ty and the cold black barrel.
A big truck with a cartoon milkman on its side flew by.
“So, you got a gun,” Michael Wilson said.
Ty didn’t answer. East tried to clear his eyes, get his voice back. He’d bitten himself inside his mouth. But now was his best chance.
“Give Ty the money,” he slurred, his mouth swelling around his teeth.
Ty kept the gun on him, though.
“Fuck no,” Michael Wilson said. He caressed one fist with the other. “Your boy gonna shoot? Don’t look like he’s decided who. So what you gonna do? Put me out?”
“Yes,” said East. He’d thought it before. But now that Michael had said it, it was the only way.
Michael Wilson surged from his toes and hooked East once more, side of the gut. Sucker punch. It crumpled East, and he heaved with the pain. “See?” Michael Wilson smirked. “You ain’t shit.” He stepped and loaded up for another, when a hard crack like thunder hit them all, and East was untouched, backpedaling in the light.
Ty held the gun in the sky. Its hard gray pop echoed back from nothing.
Michael Wilson spat. “Oh, nigger, please.”
Ty aimed the gun at Michael for the first time.
“I’ll take that money now,” he said.
Michael Wilson scowled a terrible scowl at Ty. From his hip pocket he threw a curve of twenties to the ground. They fluttered, and Ty put a foot on them.
“There you go.”
Walter spoke up. “That ain’t all the money.”
Michael Wilson glanced across, measured the overpass to the station.
“Give up the rest of the money, Mike,” said Walter.
“Let him keep the rest. He’ll need it,” East said. “Now you go.”
Michael Wilson chuckled. “Just right out here on the farm?”
“That’s right,” East said. He grabbed the white mesh shirt off the mirror and tossed it at Michael Wilson. Michael shook it out and put it on. “Let me get my bag, then,” he said. East nodded, and Michael fetched it out of the back.
“Pretty bag,” East couldn’t resist remarking.
“Let me tell you something,” Michael Wilson announced. “I ain’t sorry to leave you. I’m glad. I get home with one phone call. And you are lost. You can’t get guns without me. You can’t find the man without me. Don’t none of you even look old enough to drive a car.”
“We don’t need you,” East said.
“Ain’t talking to you,” Michael Wilson said. “I’m only talking to the youngster with the gun.” He turned his back on East. “You a neighborhood boy. You ain’t in no neighborhood now. There is plenty you don’t know, gangster. You don’t know you can’t go back, because when you fail, there’s no place for you. Johnny and Sidney will kill you just for knowing what you know. Or somebody will—it don’t matter.”
“Say what you got to say,” said Ty.
“Just understand the picture.” Michael Wilson chewed off the words. “You ain’t even grown.”
“I hear you,” said Ty. “Good-bye.”
With his immaculate sneakers, Michael Wilson tested the ground. Here, after the fight, in the middle of a cornfield, he looked as polished and bright as he always had: black track suit pants, glossy gym bag, white nylon shirt with his skin dark in the mesh. Stray raindrops blew at him and disappeared.
“Just remember,” he said. “You will die. And fuck you.”
Michael Wilson nodded—at the gun, not at East—and turned and took the first step away. Then he jogged. He ran, and Ty pocketed the gun. For a moment East couldn’t believe it, that Ty had jumped in like that, and then he was letting Michael Wilson go. The Ty he’d expected, the Ty he wanted in the red, bruised part of his brain, would shoot Michael Wilson and leave him off the road for the birds. Not this. Not Michael Wilson on the country road, white shirt billowing under the roiling clouds, his necklace glinting. In a minute he had crossed the bridge and was descending. He did not look back.
8.