Ace Atkins: New Orleans Noir: The Classics

Touché finishes the weed before Baby gets a second tug at the balloon. Touché is tapping the side of the cargo container with the tree limb he sometimes uses as a walking stick.

“They running a terror campaign on all the blacks in our ’hood.” Touché flicks the spent bud away.

The gas has different effects on each member of the Mighty BNK. It makes Touché paranoid. Well, more paranoid than normal, Baby thinks.

“Them rednecks can’t just shoot any brother they feel like,” Touché says.

“That’s dumb,” Turtle says. “Sanchez ain’t no kind of redneck.” The gas brings out Turtle’s argumentative side. Sober, he would let Touché carry on until he got tired of hearing himself. “Old Sanchez’s Hispanic.”

“I don’t care if he Jesus on the cross,” says Touché. “His people coming over the borders taking our space, our girls.”

Baby knows Sanchez didn’t come over any border. Sanchez’s son went to the same school as Baby’s mom.

“And what about you?” Touché asks Baby.

Baby toys with his ankle bracelet. It’s a hunk of plastic in the shape of a watch, a handless, faceless watch that refuses to let him know what time it is. Baby wonders what will happen after they get Sanchez. Maybe the guy didn’t mean to kill Chaney, and it’s not like a smackdown will bring him back. Baby raises his eyebrows as if to say, What about me?

“You so fake.” Touché spits. “You need to man up.”

“I ain’t stomping some old dude,” Turtle says.

“He shot our boy. He got Baby with a tracking band on his leg. But he gets to walk around scot-free. This is our neighborhood. Shit, this is our country.” Touché started saying this after Chaney died. “We about to get a black president. People can’t screw with us like this anymore.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have tried to take his stuff,” Turtle says.

Baby skates past a one-way sign on Claiborne Avenue, his hair bouncing in the wind. A police car with its sirens going nearly sideswipes him. He salutes it, but trips to his knees in the process. That’s what the gas does to Baby: it kills his balance. Baby looks around to make sure no one saw him and picks up his board. He hurries past an abandoned double the Latinos tagged with graffiti. He can’t accept that his own neighborhood isn’t safe anymore. The jerkholes are everywhere.

It’s almost dark, and Baby’s mom will start check-up calling for him from her night job scrubbing hospital bedsheets clean. She expects him to tell her he’s safe and sound in their box of old people’s feet.

Baby thought Touché and Turtle might fight over getting Sanchez, but Touché dropped it and skated off, muttering. Baby’s relieved. He feels like there might be a better way to get payback for Chaney but doesn’t know what that way might be.

A Latino in overalls is perched on a ladder, applying stucco to the side of a two-story house. The lawn is littered with empty stucco bags. Baby hums a stone at the man, but misses. The man waves at Baby. Baby searches for another good rock, but the world disappears. His head is covered by a bag and he can’t breathe. Something hard whacks him senseless, and even though he’s defenseless, whoever’s on top of him is having too much fun to let up. He kicks Baby in the stomach and twice in the face. Baby pulls the bag off his head, but the attacker is gone. He knows he’s in trouble when he wipes his mouth and finds blood and tooth fragments.

When Baby gets home, the Pie Man is asleep on the side steps, using a paint can for a pillow. Baby goes inside and looks in his mom’s hand mirror. He’s glad she’s not around to see his nose is smashed or that he’s missing half an eyetooth. Blood coats his chin, and the dust from the stucco bag makes him look like a spook. He doesn’t want to wash the dust off, though. He’s afraid water will activate the stucco mix and turn his head to stone.

Even his mom would agree somebody has to pay for this. If the Mighty BNK let this go, pretty soon Baby, Touché, and every other kid in the neighborhood would be swinging from trees like piñatas at Sunday picnics. Baby runs outside and fingers the van keys from the snoring Pie Man’s pocket. Every color in the rainbow is on the Pie Man’s grungy jacket. Baby hops into the Pie Man’s van and cranks the ignition. The van is hard to drive since the pedals are so far from the seat, but it’s only a couple of blocks to Touché’s.

The van seems fake, like one of those twenty-five-cent rides you plunk your kid brother into outside of a grocery store. The kind with two doughnut-sized steering wheels that don’t do anything.

“They rolled you like a blunt.” Touché purses his lips in a mock whistle after he climbs into the passenger seat. He almost seems to be enjoying this.

Baby rubs his mouth, but the sharp pain stops him. Although the bleeding has slowed, his jaw clicks when he moves it.

“Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you before,” Touché says. “It’s get or get got out here.”

They stop at a gas station in Gert Town. There’s a darkened church on the next lot. One of the neon cross arms is out, so it looks like a machine gun turned on its nose. Touché leaps out and disappears into the station. The station lights are painfully bright to Baby. He’s starting to think taking the van was not the greatest idea.

Touché sprints from the gas station, toting a bottle. He hands it to Baby; it’s a bottle of Goose.

“Should we go get Turtle?” Baby says.

“We don’t need no pussies in the way. We mad dogs tonight.”

Baby doesn’t let the vodka bottle touch his sore lips when he drinks. Tilting his head back makes him woozy, but he recovers as his insides swelter. He tastes ashes and rust and pours some onto the van floor.

“Why’d you do that for?” Touché says.

“That’s for Sanchez,” Baby says. “He’s going to need it.”

Touché chuckles and takes the bottle. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.”

They drive to Sanchez’s garage and climb out. Touché and Baby slip white stockings over their heads. Baby’s hair makes the stocking pooch out so that he looks like a lightbulb. Baby immediately wants to tear the mask off. It mashes the swollen parts of his face and sandpapers the sweat-moistened stucco coating his skin.

It’s still early enough that Sanchez is bent under a hood like he’s praying to the engine. Water tings as it circulates in the van radiator.

“Yo, old man Sanchez! What’s up, amigo ?” Touché calls out before they enter the wooden fence. Before Sanchez can see who’s coming. Touché says amigo wrong. Hi-meego , he says.

“ Que pasa, ’migo ?” says Sanchez, stuffing a rag into his overalls. He stops in place when Touché and Baby step into view. Baby figures Sanchez will take off running or go for a gun in his toolbox, but he doesn’t. He rakes a hand through his thin white hair. Baby keeps expecting the Pie Man to show up and slap Touché on the back and say they’ve had enough fun for one night. Instead, they stand in silence broken only by nature: crickets and toads rioting in the bushes.

Sanchez steps backward. He’s short. Not Baby short, but not much taller.

“Move.” Touché shoves Sanchez toward the van.

“You’re Reverend Goodman’s son?” Sanchez says to Touché. The stocking mask smushes Touché’s features. It flattens out his cheekbones and tweaks his nose downward. Like he’s wearing a mask under his mask.

“You don’t know me, niño ,” Touché says.

“Ian?” Sanchez says to Baby, calling him by the name Baby’s mom only uses when she’s about to lay down the law. Sanchez can see Baby’s face through the mask. “Why are you here to do this?”