On the other hand, T.C.’s mama spilled out useless details, conspiracy theories, information from her childhood nobody wanted to hear, outright inventions, stream-of-consciousness commentary, and caustic affronts that sometimes held truth, sometimes didn’t. Like the time she told Miss Patricia that she’d been ignoring her since she got her new house, but there was no new house. Then once when she was delivering a monologue to the TV screen, T.C. heard her say her mama had died when she was three years old. But her mama was still here, had let T.C. stay with her after he lost the scholarship in fact, and if it hadn’t been for his MawMaw, he’d be doing much worse than selling weed by the eighth.
When he was done dressing, he walked with the COs to sign his release forms. Then they handed him the money left in his commissary, and he was free to go.
T.C. had called Tiger the day before, and sure enough here he was waiting in the parking lot leaning in front of his silver Honda Civic, fancy since T.C. last saw it, with new blacked-out twenty-two-inch rims. The two had met a few years back playing intramural basketball at Joe Brown Park. Tiger always ran with the wrong crowd, even went to juvie when they were in middle school, and T.C.’s mama banned him from kids like that his whole childhood. But things were different now: Tiger had been friends with Daryl too, and after the storm that was worth more than a good reputation.
“Whoa, nigga,” Tiger called out. It was an expression that still stirred fear in T.C. Technically it just meant come here or let me talk to you, but it had been what the boys had called out before they jumped him in high school, and once before he even started hustling, three dudes cornered him with the same line before they pressed a gun against his temple.
“I’m just messing with you.” Tiger walked up closer. “You know I’m just messing with you,” he repeated, laughing so hard his shoulders shook. “You done gained weight, huh?” He leaned into T.C. and felt his biceps.
“You know it, ain’t nothing else to do in there,” T.C. said, feeling his heartbeat settle. He had an urge to knock the boy out for scaring him like that, but he took a couple of deep breaths like the counselor inside had taught him, told himself to calm down. “But looka you, you ridin’ on them thangs, huh?” he asked after a while, nodding at the new rims.
“Yeah, yeah, you know how I do.” They both walked closer to the car. “But looka you, your dreads all twisted up, and long. They almost catchin up with mine.” Tiger fingered T.C.’s thick, black hair. His own hung past his bright green T-shirt, nearly touching the top of his tapered jeans. He was shuffling his feet, socked up in Adidas slippers.
“Still light bright and damn near white though,” Tiger play-scoffed. “That’s why they let you out early? I thought you had another two weeks.”
“Nah, overpopulation, nigga,” T.C. said, laughing. “They need to make room for the real menaces to society.” T.C. was lucky—he’d been headed to reup when he was caught and only had a few ounces of weed on him; if it had been a day later, hell, a few hours later, he’d be in jail two years minimum.
“Aw, nigga, they done made a mistake releasing you then,” Tiger said. They laughed together finally, gave each other dap, then came apart again.
“You look good though,” Tiger added. “You must be getting ready for the comeback, and we got competition now, boy. Right after you caught your lil’ bid, Spud got out.”
“What?” T.C. leaned against the car, guessing they’d catch up for a minute, then he’d ask Tiger to drive them the hell out of there.
“Yep, he been trying to reposition himself. I been spreading the word that you coming back but nobody ain’t hearing it. Half our block been buying from him.”
“Oh, yeah?” T.C. let out a nervous laugh. “Well, maybe that’s for the best.”
“What you mean ‘that’s for the best,’ nigga?”
Tiger looked at him as if he’d been joking, and maybe he was. He didn’t know.
“What you mean?” Tiger repeated. “We got to eat. What, you plan on going back to Winn-Dixie?”
“Hell, no,” T.C. said, then laughed suddenly, an awkward burst of sound, but he had been thinking about it, had even calculated how many hours he’d have to work to make enough to get an apartment over in Lakewind East on Bundy. It came out to a lot, but people did it, some he went to school with, and he’d run into them bagging groceries on his late-night munchie runs.
“Bruh, I ain’t trying to think about that right now,” T.C. said. He opened the passenger door. The truth was it was all he had been thinking about. It was jailhouse policy to declare you weren’t coming back. He didn’t know anybody who hadn’t screamed it across his cell at least once in a fit of rage or desperation, or repeated it to himself like a prayer during meal lineup, and that wasn’t to say he didn’t believe it. He did, but something happened when you walked away from those prison gates: Freedom and its expansive nature convinced you it could last forever. The promises you made to yourself flitted from the front of your consciousness. It was funny, but already, not even in the car that would take him away, he could remember the allure, the fast money, the easy power of his old life. The one thing was, he was really good at it, and there weren’t too many other things he could say that about anymore.
“Anyway,” T.C. went on. “I need you to ride me Uptown.”
“What the hell? That’s in the opposite direction of home.”
“Is it that far?” He smiled his big goofy smile he’d gotten teased for in fifth grade. He didn’t smile for a while after that year, but sometimes he couldn’t help it.
Tiger started the car. Lil Wayne’s “Right Above It” came on, still getting bumped on Q93 after four months inside. T.C. put his head back and sighed as they pulled out of the prison lot. They passed the St. Louis Cemetery, its white cement tombs like little houses above ground, then the old St. Bernard Projects. The city tore them down after Katrina, gutted the windows, razed the tall bricks. They were almost done building something new in its wake, but T.C. still didn’t know where all the old residents had gone.
“It’s hot as hell in here,” he said. “You ain’t got no air conditioning?”
“You see the windows down. It’s broke, nigga.”
“The windows being down ain’t helping. That’s just hot air comin in here then, nigga.”
“Well, maybe I need to slow down and let yo’ ass out. Maybe the air is cooler on the sidewalk.”
T.C. laughed, felt the sweat start to roll down his balls.
“You not going out by Alicia, then, huh?” Tiger asked.
At the sound of her name, T.C.’s head shot back up. “Aww, hell no. She beaucoup pregnant, bruh. You can’t fuck a woman when she big like that. I’d push a hole in my lil’ baby’s head.”
Tiger laughed. “That ain’t true, bruh. I went up in my old lady till the last minute with all my kids.”
“Ain’t one of your kids slow though?”
“Nah, bruh, all my kids is straight.”
“Nah, bruh, you told me one of them niggas tried to fight a teacher and had to be put in the slow class.”
“Nah, bruh, that teacher tried to sneak up on him one day, ya heard me. My man got them killer instincts like his daddy. He ain’t gon’ stand for that bullshit. Anyway you was in the slow class yourself, my nigga.”