Ace Atkins - New Orleans Noir - The Classics

The Pie Man and Baby put on respirator masks. Baby thinks the Pie Man looks like a futuristic rat. Baby grabs a sledgehammer and zeroes in on the face of Guy Bluford, the first brother launched into outer space. He swings and before long the walls are coming down all around him.

It’s an hour to sundown and the Pie Man left Baby once they finished work for the day. Touché and Turtle skate up the driveway in front of the school.

Touché does a 360 from a ramp angled over a mound of bricks and stops near Baby.

“Welcome back to Genitalia.” Touché’s got a faux-hawk and his striped hoody makes it look like he’s still spinning. General Taylor and Peniston are the streets closest to Crocker facing downtown. They’ve called the streets Genitalia and Peniston since the sixth grade. Dry Ass Street runs perpendicular to them both, a few blocks closer to the streetcar line. “You still got your Oreo ’fro, little man?”

“Man, my mama can’t make a brother cut off his trademark,” says Baby. He hates it when Touché makes fun of his size almost as much as he hates when he makes fun of the fact he’s practically half white. It isn’t Baby’s fault his mom’s pops wasn’t black like everyone else. Touché seems to know where everyone’s buttons are. He’s like a video-game champ who’s got all the secret codes memorized. X to kick you in the gizzards. Z plus turbo to take out your knees and dump you in Lake Pontchartrain. Sometimes you don’t even know it was Touché who got you. Touché’s manipulations bug Baby sometimes, but more often than not Baby is silently praying he learns how to do it himself.

“Yeah, I asked your mama for a haircut. She gave me a blowjob instead.” Baby pokes his tongue against his cheek and pumps his fist. “The bitch still don’t understand English.”

“Your mama so fat,” says Touché, “I pushed that ho in the Mississippi River and rode her to the other side.”

“I heard in Sunday school,” Baby says, “your mama so old she was Jesus’ nanny.”

“Your mama so fat she went to an all-you-can-eat buffet and ate the Chinese waitress,” says Turtle, adjusting his thick glasses. “She be using Ethiopians as toothpicks.”

“Your mama—” says Touché, but he stops and punches Turtle in the shoulder. No one makes fun of Turtle’s real mom. Not even Touché. Not since the last time they saw her, dry-skinned and strung out, begging for change on Canal Street. She wore a tank top and jeans so small they could have fit a ten-year-old, but loose enough to reveal her soiled lace underwear. “We need to get that Sanchez and pop him. Whap .” Touché clutches his board and brings it down on Sanchez’s imaginary head. “Or drag him across town by a rope.”

“Kill that noise,” says Turtle. “We ain’t getting nobody.” He grabs Baby’s shoulder. “I saw the Pie Man’s van earlier.” Turtle is nearly blind from getting his head kicked in.

Baby always thinks he’s staring at him from another world through those binoculars. A scarier world. Turtle’s pops is a scary dude. He’s in Orleans Parish Prison for drugs and guns. Two life sentences.

“He playing camp counselor again?” Turtle asks.

Baby nods.

“Come on.” Turtle skates off with his glasses in hand. He doesn’t need them to get where they’re going.

All three boys glide to the lot behind the school. Scraggly grass forms a crescent along the edges of the fractured concrete. Baby is reminded of the Pie Man’s receding hairline. They enter a rusting cargo container where the Mighty Black Ninja Krew keeps the gas canisters.

The Mighty BNK is what Baby and his boys do when they’re bored. And for fame. Like the time they went berserk-boarding through the Catholic church by the house where Turtle’s foster family lives. Baby videoed the others zipping across the checkerboard floors and leaping from the altar. As Touché spray-painted MBNK on the wooden doors during their escape, Baby noticed statues of old men in the gallery above. They wore flowing pink sheets, one statue dangling a key, the other a sword. They looked like they wanted to kick his ass. He gave them the finger, and the Mighty BNK got away clean.

Touché posted the video, which went viral on the web. The Mighty Black Ninja Krew was right behind a video of a white guy demonstrating stupid dance moves and that toothless cat trying to slurp up that mouse.

If he were being totally honest, Baby would admit he joined the Mighty BNK for the same reason as the others: to get laid. They hide their faces on camera with white stockings, but everybody at school knows who they are. It’s worked out great for the rest of the Mighty BNK. It hasn’t worked at all for Baby.

He doesn’t have the swagger of Touché or the brains of Turtle or the wicked determination of Chaney, shot dead when the Mighty BNK tried to loot Sanchez’s garage. Baby’s fourteen, but looks closer to nine since he’s two heads shorter than the others and has no stubble on his chin, chest, or groin. It’s caused trouble for him with the girls at school, and when they call him Baby, they mean it.

He’s got a plan, though. He’ll lay some pipe on Trenisha, who plays center for the girls basketball team. That shorty is over six feet tall and rough around the edges, but Baby knows he can smooth her out doggie-style like a Chihuahua on a Great Dane in the janitor’s closet or, better yet, in the backseat of Principal Colton’s Cadillac while the Mighty BNK cheers him on. The video would make him a legend in his own time.

But Baby doesn’t know the first, second, or third thing about girls, let alone what it might be like to go to any of the bases with them. He listens to the rest of the Mighty BNK kid around and is sure they’ve all done it — even Chaney, who will never do it again. Baby fears he’ll die without doing it. He wonders if dying without doing it means he winds up in heaven as a kid for all eternity. Or hell.

Touché snickers in the corner of the rusty cargo container, having gone first. His arms are tight against his chest. Baby knows this pose means to leave him be. Baby and the Mighty BNK jacked the nitrous oxide from Sanchez because they were tired of sniffing airplane glue and Freon, which burned the ever-loving b’jesus out of their noses.

Turtle fills a blue balloon from the nitrous oxide canister and hands it to Baby. Baby’s careful not to let any gas escape. Touché’s face is wet. He always cries when they fly.

Turtle tokes weed in a crouch. He offers to Baby, but Baby shakes his head. Baby takes a draw from the balloon, nearly as much as his lungs will hold. Then he sucks a bit of straight air on top to hold the gas steady. The nitrous is sweet on his tongue. Sweet like he’s just licked a birthday cake. Sweet and steady, like his birthday was yesterday, is today, and will be tomorrow. Seated and holding his breath, Baby clutches the tips of his Chuck Taylors for dear life. A tingling rips up his spine like electric spiders on parade. The spiders are angry this time. They rummage through Baby’s innards for flies, bad ideas, and mildew, but don’t find enough.

Baby pushes the gas from his lungs. He feels like propeller blades are chopping him into finer and finer pieces. Every time he feels this, Baby wonders what it would be like to choose how he puts himself back together. Maybe in Atlanta instead of New Orleans this time. Bigger and stronger this time. Taller and darker this time. This time hung like a mutant ox. Maybe this time feared by men and loved like a widow’s diamond. Baby clutches his hair and falls onto his back, shivering.

They were good until the alarm in Sanchez’s garage went off. Baby saw the flash of Sanchez’s gun, and Chaney’s eyes open as full moons on his way to the ground. After Touché and Turtle ran away, the police found Baby frozen in place, his sneakers covered in vomit, the only member of the Mighty BNK captured alive.