She lets out a hollow laugh that makes the hairs on my arms stand. “You know, to say you and Daddy are fighters, y’all are some scary ass motherfuckas. Y’all run your scary asses from all the shit that makes you uncomfortable like accountability and…and emotions.”
I try to bury the words she throws at me in that dark part of my brain, but minds are funny. All the shit I try to hold on to always slips away with ease while the hateful, ugly stuff clings to me like the sticker burrs me and Arnez used to pick from the yard and fling at each other. They even hurt the same.
“I hope that girl knows how hollow you are.”
I cut my eyes at her. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what, nigga? Don’t talk about her? What’s so special about her that I can’t talk about her?”
“She ain’t do nothing to you,” I mumble, even though I wanna yell at her that Slim ain’t donothingtonobody.
The only thing she’s guilty of is always trying to see the good in hurt people that only ever hurt her back.
My phone vibrates in my pocket as if she knows we’re arguing about her. She calls it her midday check-in. It’s always a short voice message that starts with some nerdy fact, like the exact minute and second Myra Monkhouse and Steve Urkel first kissed, because she’s “bingeing”Family Matterson a new Hulu account I pay for now. The messages always end with a “justthinking about you, Mr. Lovelace” like she knows that life is a lot easier to live when I have her sitting around “just thinking about me.”
I pick up another screw while Arnez stares at me from the doorway.
“She know there ain’t no heart in your chest?” she asks.
No.
Slim is convinced that I’m her personal Tin Man because she swears the Land of Oz is real based on some shit called Quantum Mechanics.
“It means we can exist somewhere in another parallel universe. Would you want to exist somewhere else with me?” she asked me one night in a voice message.
“Let it go, Arnez,” I mutter.
She snorts. “I just wanna know if she knows there ain’t nothing there for her to hold on to—just like it wasn’t shit in Daddy’s chest for Faye to hold on to. Y’all are hollow.”
I cut my eyes at her.
She’s looking at me like she hates me again, and I just want her to mush me in my face like she used to do anytime she got mad at me, but those days are gone. I don’t even remember what her hits feel like anymore.
“Clean up your mess and get out when you’re done,” she croaks, turning and walking off.
I feel Smitty staring at the side of my face.
“What?” I grunt, glancing at him.
He shakes his head, twisting the screwdriver into one of the slats.
I huff. “Say what you gotta say.”
“Nah…you know I don’t wanna get involved in this?—”
“Say what the fuck you gotta say, man.”
He sucks his teeth. “You remember when me and your daddy used to take you down to the fish creek?”
I nod.
“What I tell you the first time you caught a drum?”
I huff. “Before or after you told me you’d beat my ass for crying about having to kill it?”
“After, boy.”
I swallow the chalky taste in my mouth and the smell of that fresh water scent I still crave sometimes when I look at Senior laying in his bed at Beatrice’s. “You said ‘remorse didn’t live in a fighter’s heart.’”
