“Oh, I see. So he’s one ofthoseprojects. You said you were done with those types of projects after what happened with the AC unit.”
“Look here, those other guys ain’t have a right hook like Rich’s. He’s a true southpaw.”
I scoff and drag my hand across the wall, searching for a light switch. “I wouldn’t know. All their punches looked like they landed the same to me.”
My bandaged fingers finally brush a switch, and I flick it up, illuminating the barely there foyer.
Uncle Kenny had a lot of projects when I was growing up, but he called them “fighters.” They wereveryspecific boys from the Bottoms that he saw heavyweight potential in because their daddies and grandaddies were the ones who fought down at Lucky’s before it got raided in the 90s. He always said that what he wanted in a boxer was already in their genes.
So, those boys messed around in the streets until they ended up on our porch looking for Uncle Kenny. Terrica and Meechie said most of them sold dope for Melo Barnes, but they always argued over the rumor’s truthfulness considering the man gave out turkeys on Thanksgiving and sold hay from the ranch he owned out in the country.
I saw him being interviewed in a throwback clip on the fifteenth anniversary of the sting operation that shut down the fighting ring at Lucky’s when I was watching the news with Uncle Kenny once. He didn’t look like a drug dealer, though.
“I’m a businessman with big dreams, and Bayou Crest is my home. It made me who I am,” he said with his eyes hiddenbehind a pair of sunglasses. “And drugs are poison to our community, just like illegal underground operations such as the one that ran out of Lucky’s. We need to get our community under control. We need less drug dealers and fighters in Bayou Crest and more dreamers.”
Fighters have never left us any better than how they found us. Uncle Kenny took out a loan to pay for Zaire’s funeral and Legend just stopped showing up to the gym one day. EJ was the only one who made his amateur debut, but he’s the reason Worthing needs a new AC unit. He had stripped the copper from it, sold it to a scrapyard, then ran off to Georgia with the money. Now there’s this new one Aunt Faye is weirdly fascinated with.
“You sure he’s gonna be gone the whole time?” I ask, eyeing a pair of muddy Nikes tucked next to the coat closet.
“Yeah. Why?”
“I don’t want it to be…weird. You know?”
She howls out a deep laugh, but I can’t join in.
I haven’t been alone with a man other than AJ since I left Houston. I can’t tell Aunt Faye that, though.
“It won’t beweird. He’s a respectful man. Besides, the appointment was at nine in the medical center. I’m sure he’ll be gone for a while,” she says. “There’s traffic…parking…waiting…more waiting…the actual appointment…more traffic...and the park. He likes to walk the park on Mondays.”
I cringe as I try to picture this mammoth of a man—a fighter with a supposed perfect right hook who likes to take strolls in the park on Monday mornings.
I crane my neck, peering around Aunt Faye to look deeper inside the house.
“What you looking for?” she asks.
“You know what I’m looking for,” I mumble back.
Our eyes meet and this time we laugh together, telepathically reminiscing on all the thongs, weave, and other “interesting” things we found in other bachelor pads.
“Rich ain’t like that. He could be…but he ain’t. Just make sure you use the baking soda on his whites.”
“He has a washer and dryer?”
“Yeah, and a toilet too. Can you believe that?” she asks sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
I side-eye her like she used to do to me when one of those boys from the Bottoms would show up on our porch looking for Uncle Kenny while eyeing me up and down. They were always tall, solid, and off-limits because they were nothing but trouble. Uncle Kenny wouldn’t have wasted his time with them if they were anything but that.
He always said, “It ain’t no dog in the good ones.”
Every toilet in Rich’s house is spotless.
“Good aim, I guess.” I sigh, nudging the lid down on the master bathroom toilet.
I guess Aunt Faye was right.
Rich isn’t coming home anytime soon.
His little house is so quiet that I hear his neighbors slamming dominoes on a table every few minutes even though it’s still early. Aunt Faye told me to turn on the living room TV to drown them out, but I can’t.
