T.C. sat down.
“Mothafucka, you lookin’ like you seen a ghost. Where you coming from all paranoid?”
“That place, nigga, jail, that’s where I’m coming from all paranoid.” T.C. was surprised to hear himself shout. He was still worn-out from MawMaw’s, plus this wasn’t funny.
“Aw, I’m sorry, nigga, calm down. Calm down. You said we was going to meet up, you don’t remember?” Tiger repeated.
T.C. shook his head.
“Anyway lemme holla at you, dawg. They been feedin’ you for free in that place, but I’m hungry, nigga. I told you about Spud, not even moving the gas himself, letting other people do that shit for him so he out of the limelight. That would save you twenty hours a week, at least. You growing a quarter pound a month now; you could quadruple that. Sell the same amount, but the proceeds are all yours, and a little bit would go to me of course,” he chuckled.
T.C. didn’t even look at him, just down at his own feet, his white socks and Adidas slippers. He had never wanted much. Even when he was young and MawMaw would try to buy him the newest Jordans, the Girbaud jeans, he would take them because it made her happy, but he never really needed all this.
“Before you say anything,” Tiger went on, “just listen. That’s the problem; earlier today, I could tell you wasn’t listening, and this is complicated shit. It’s not like before. We can’t just sell to yo random-ass friends. You too good at what you do to be depriving the public, nigga; this is a goldmine and we gotta capitalize on it while it’s hot.”
And then MawMaw going and mentioning his daddy. He hadn’t thought about him in years, not the way he was thinking about him now, with longing, that old hurt he buried rising back.
“So my cousin is moving out, I’m thinking we take over his old room, switch to hydro, grow twelve plants, turn out four ounces each. So that’s three pounds, and nigga, it’s all ours to keep.”
Now there was his little boy. He spent his whole childhood fantasizing about how different he was going to be with his own, but he wasn’t sure he was going to swing it. He wasn’t stupid. You reached a certain depth in the drug world, and it was inevitable you’d be caught, but that took years; he was still riding on beginner’s luck, and all he needed was a few more months to spark a turnaround. Something big to help him scale the next bend in his life.
“And this ain’t the kind of thing you gotta do forever. I’m talking six months at the most, we get a big yield, turn a profit off it, and we set; you want to open a restaurant, do it. You want to open a clothing store, do it. The sky’s the limit, my nigga. But you gotta be ready to turn the whole thing up a notch.” He paused. “My only question is, how much it cost to buy more plants?”
The plants weren’t the half of it. It was the lamps, the power to fuel them. But maybe MawMaw knew there was something on the horizon of his life; maybe she could divine he was on the verge of something greater, and maybe she couldn’t determine the shape of it, but she could see its outline, she could estimate its weight.
“It’s cool,” T.C. nearly whispered.
“What? That’s it?”
T.C. nodded.
Tiger paused.
“All right then,” Tiger said after a minute. “All right then, dawg. That lil’ boo musta gave you what you needed ’cause you was trippin’ this morning. I thought that place had turned you out, dawg.”
“When were you thinking we could start?” T.C. asked.
“Today, my nigga. I got my contact who sell the seeds. They got the ride and everything. They’ll come right over.”
“Call him then,” T.C. got up for the bathroom. He remembered MawMaw, the pad bulging in her pants, the loose shirt sneaking down past her shoulder blade. He shook the image out of his head. At least when they reup’ed he could roll a blunt. He and Tiger could sit on his patio like old times stuffing their faces with Domino’s slices, or maybe they’d stay in, play Mario Kart. He had won a bronze trophy before he left, and he might as well start making plays for silver.
Evelyn
Summer 1944
A few weeks after the dinner, Evelyn sat in her bedroom finishing her homework, when Ruby stormed in.
Evelyn asked what was wrong, but she didn’t look up. She didn’t imagine anything substantive could be the matter. Ruby had Andrew, she had Daddy’s approval, what more did she need?
Ruby mumbled something, but Evelyn didn’t understand it and instead of digging further, she started preparing for bed.
“He’s leaving me,” Ruby repeated, this time belting it out across the room.
“Oh,” Evelyn said, with more emotion than she’d given her previous comment but far less than the situation might have appeared to require. She was surprised, and then she wasn’t. The more she’d gotten to know Andrew, the more it seemed he was a sensible type of guy. She didn’t understand what had taken him so long to see her sister wasn’t his equivalent. On the other hand, everything had been going so well.
“You’re not going to say anything else?” Ruby asked. “You’re just going to stand there and finish undressing.”
Evelyn sighed. “Was it another girl, Ruby?”
“What?” Ruby hustled up behind her. “If it was another girl, you think I’d be here crying? I’d be out somewhere screaming, I might even be swinging, but I wouldn’t be crying.”
Is that so? Evelyn wanted to say. She remembered Ruby in the exact same position when old Langston had strayed, but Evelyn only nodded and said, “Okay then.”
Ruby got tired of waiting for a proper response and threw her handkerchief down on the floor.
“He’s going to the war,” she said, her words sputtering out, except for the last word, war, which sealed the rest of them together.
Evelyn looked up then. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, so now you’re cooking with gas. What do you think I mean? He’s going to war. He’s leaving in a couple weeks. He may never come back. What else do you need to know, Evelyn? Looks like those are the only few details that matter.”
Mother opened the door then, gleaned the problem from Ruby’s display, and wrapped her arms around her child.
“That’s okay now, my pretty baby; ah, la pauv’ piti.”
Evelyn felt sick witnessing her sister being comforted, and when Mother whispered for Evelyn to get a towel, she was happy to oblige.