Maurice Broaddus - King Maker

"What you fellas up to?"

"Nothing," Wayne said.

"We're going to the Phoenix Apartments." King stepped to her. Whenever he neared her, he felt he could do anything. He didn't know if it was because he needed to prove he was the man he wanted to be for her or if the power of her faith in him charged him. "Put a stop to some of this nonsense once and for all."

"Not without me," Lady G said. "Rhee stays up in there."

"You'd take a bitch into your mess?" Baylon exited onto Prez's porch. He cold-eyed Lady G who sniffed in his direction then sucked her teeth in disgust. Between her obvious disdain and his own growing irritation, Baylon was in a mood to push things. The Durham Brothers. Junie. Parker. No one heard anything from Green or Tavon. With Night buying on consignment from Dred anyway and both sides weakened, Baylon saw an opportunity for consolidation. Perhaps head-hunting the top talent in order to make a move of his own. With their troops getting thin, Prez had risen up the ranks of foot soldiers. Baylon no longer had the luxury of traveling with a retinue of any sort. It was too late to recalculate the strength of his position now staring into the ranks of King's crew.

"No, I'd take a woman who could handle her business to clean up your mess." King glanced up from his perch to the porch step and stepped between her and Baylon. Although the idea of her anywhere near danger didn't sit well with him, he'd respect her decision.

"What you doing over here?" Lady G asked.

"Checking on some business. I had no idea you stayed here if that what you thinking," Baylon said. "Some niggas need them high-drama bitches. They need the bang, the rush. Not me. I need a straight bitch. One that can handle her, and my, business. Say what you will, and Lady G's no joke, but she ain't needless drama."

"Careful now." King squared off against Baylon. A spirit of over-protectiveness commingled with a surge of jealousy. His face grew hot.

"What? You don't like it when I talk about your 'friend' like that?" Baylon asked, stepping down to meet his stare. His Pit Bull leapt to the screen door, all thunderous scrapes of paws against glass. It mimicked growls as best it could through its severed vocal cords. "Oh, I see. That's it isn't it. I don't think I like the way you be looking at my girl, dog."

Lady G wasn't his girl. She knew of his… whatever he was feeling, and never accepted his overtures. She was something he desired that he didn't own and couldn't control. He didn't even know her beyond whatever idealized idea of her that he had built up in his head. Nor was she especially flattered by the pissing contest going on between these two, neither of whom had any particular claim on her. Her affections were hers to place wherever she wanted.

"How's that? With respect? Like she's a person?" King knew he had crossed a line. He'd called Baylon out, in front of the neighborhood. There was no backing down for him now. Honor, if he could call it that, demanded that Baylon answer this upstart's challenge. No one could afford to show any weakness.

"It ain't shit to be loved by a saint. Saints have to love everyone. You might as well be a dog. But we devils, nah, we ain't got to love anyone but ourselves. So when we do love a bitch, shit, they know and they ain't going nowhere. Me, I'm straight-up gangsta now, not the boy you grew up with. Gangsta recognizes gangsta… and you lookin' kinda unfamiliar."

Baylon threw a quick hard punch with his free hand and caught King off guard with a punch to the kidneys. King doubled over at the impact, leaving his head perfectly poised to receive another crashing blow from Baylon. As the roundhouse arced downward, King stood into it, deflecting it. His back slightly turned to Baylon, King thrust his elbow into his belly then stepped to the side to hit him.

That was the last clean blow landed.

Fights rarely worked the way that they did on television or in the movies, nor lasted as long. Baylon scrambled from his awkward stance and charged King, wrapping his arms around him. The two of them bowled over into the front lawn. A flurry of movement meant to be the exchange of punches followed, neither one of them doing much more than pushing into one another while entangled.

Wayne and Lott rushed over to break them up, with Lott holding back Baylon. King glared at him, unflinching. This time he was ready in case Baylon decided to start something again.

"Let go of me." Baylon shook him off. "This fool just got it in his head to try and step to my girl and I ain't the one to get played out, like some punk bitch."

"What the fuck?" Wayne asked King. "All the stuff going on and you reduce it all to a jealousy beef?"

It was all slipping away. Lady G. The crew. The Egbo Society. The world he knew raced toward entropy, decaying from the outside in. Soon King's name would be ringing out in the streets. Baylon could sense the momentum change already. For now they were a small band, but they stood true. Should they come out the other end alive, they would be well on their way to becoming legends. Sometimes survival itself was the stuff of legends. He had no plays left here that would have him save face. Except one. Maybe.

Baylon slipped the knife into his hand. He lurched forward in a stumbling gait, like a wino tromping through an alley trying to steady himself. He thought of Michelle. And Griff. The history of blood and misfortune on this blade. And he determined that King was the rightful inheritor of its pain. With a flick of his wrist, the steel tooth snapped to life and in a fluid movement, he arced the weapon at King before he could react. A searing pain lanced through King's side. The problem with knives was that once they were drawn, the user depended entirely on them. Baylon, off balance and startled, made an easy target. Stunned for a moment at the utter futility and ridiculousness of the attack, King landed an uppercut that snapped Baylon's head back, even as his momentum sent the two of them tumbling onto the lawn.

"King. Oh shit." Lady G rushed to his side. "He get you?"

"I don't… I think so," he said, slow to get to one knee before giving up and supporting his weight with an arm then slumping back to the ground. King raised his hands so that he could see them. Blood stained each of them.

"Don't move. Don't move," she said.

"It's all right. It's only a flesh wound. Seriously."

Baylon didn't move, but instead released a low groan. King stooped over him and snatched the knife he still desperately grasped. He rotated it in his hands, examining it as if its touch told him everything he needed to know. He tossed the blade to the side.

"Just… just stay down. I'm tired and I'm not here to beef with you. If there's gonna be a fight, I'm gonna take it outside of the family."

"Time grows short," Merle warned, his eyes studying the mood of the day.

"What do you want us to do?" Lott stared at the still-stunned Baylon.

"Leave him." King clutched his side and stood up. "We go to the Phoenix."

Winter had arrived and few had noticed. Like the previous few years on memory, the temperatures were chilly but not too cold, in the mid-40s. The wind didn't rob the body of warmth, not in that deep bone-chill way of the harsher winter of childhood memories. No, these days it more often rained than snowed, not that anyone complained. Had it been cold enough to turn the rains to snow, the blanket of snow would have settled six feet if an inch.

The six-story complex ran over two city-blocks long and one block wide, a veritable prison of inexpensive accommodation. To the east, past the back parking lots, Fall Creek wound its length, the thin grove of trees separating the apartments from the rest of the city. To the rear of the buildings which formed the Phoenix Apartments, a gravel trail — overgrown, as if something once stood there — led through a canopy of trees. Brown leaves pooled against the base of the black chain-link fence which circled the outer boundaries of the apartments. Cans of Budweiser littered the playground. Concrete slabs, a desert of cracked pavement choked with weeds and broken glass. Nobody wanted to be here, all equally prisoners in a compound of liberal wellmeaning benevolence. Along the sad array that passed for a playground, the ladder of the slide held more rust than paint. One of the swings looped around the top of its frame. The yellow school bus jungle gym had been tagged. RIP Alaina. RIP Conant. A few more RIP notices, names no one recognized.