Charlie Huston - No Dominion

The door opens. I keep my eyes closed. Someone walks across the room toward me. My thumb is over the silver button on the side of the switchblade. Whoever it is stops at my feet. I smell baby powder and Bay Rum.

– We kin fix that right up.

I open my eyes.

– No trouble a’tall. Fix it right up.

The one-armed barber is standing over me.

– Fix what up?

– That nasty-ass haircut I wuz givin’ ya. Make ya look proper.

I touch my hair.

– It’s fine.

– No, no it ain’t. Looks like shee-it. Fix it up right.

Across the shower room, the door to the hall is open. No sign of rhinos. The switchblade is cupped in my palm, unopened.

I watch the barber’s eyes.

– Digga want you to clean me up for my big match?

– What? No. Shit no. He don’t care none what yo ass look like. I care. Got me some pro-fessional pride.

– Gonna do it now?

– What? You stupid in the head? Got no time ta do it now. Got ta get yo ass out of here.

– What?

– What? What? Man, Digga right, you one stupid-ass white boy. Get up, we got ta get gone.

I get up. He walks over to the open door.

– Come on.

The rhinos are on the floor in the hall. I look at the barber.

– You do that?

– No one else here, is they?

There isn’t.

– They dead?

He scratches his head.

– Well, that the million-dollar question, ain’t it?

– Sure is.

He points at one of the rhinos.

– They just out. Now get that coat off him. An’ that sweatshirt underneath.

I tug off the rhino’s jacket and the hooded sweatshirt beneath, seeing the huge knot on the back of his head.

– Put that shit on. An walk while you doin’ it.

I walk, following the barber away from the shower room, wrapping myself in the rhino’s clothes and noticing the massive build of the barber’s left arm and shoulder. I think about putting the knife in his ear. I should wait ’til he leads me out.

We climb some stairs; different from the ones that had been guarded by Papa’s man. These are narrower; the back way in. The barber looks me over.

– Put up the hood. Yeah, that right. An keep yo head down. An yo hands in yo pockets. Yeah. OK. An keep yo mouth shut.

He opens a door and we walk onto the blacktop playground behind the Jack. I keep my head down, my hands in my pockets and my mouth shut. We walk past the basketball courts. I can hear the jingle of chain nets in the breeze. The barber tugs my sleeve.

– This way. Keep yo head down. Just follow me. Doan look up none. Things quiet, but still they got a watch on. Gonna climb some steps now.

We climb some steps. A lot of steps. We’re climbing the concrete stairs that cut up the side of that cliff I saw earlier. The barber pauses at the top.

– OK. I think we cool. You kin look up, but keep that damn hood on.

I look up. We go down Edgecombe for a couple blocks. At the corner of 150th, he stops. There’s a house with a spiked iron fence around it. He unlocks a gate and lets us in. The house is huge. It’s red brick with black shingles and shutters, looks like a haunted house straight out of an old Universal horror flick.

The barber walks around a cracked stone path that takes us to the rear. We go down a couple steps to a basement door.

He looks at me.

– Place got atmosphere, doan it?

– Yes, it does.

He unlocks the door, steps in and switches on a light. I follow him in, expecting Digga and his crew to jump out and yell surprise and beat the hell out of me. It doesn’t happen that way. Instead, the barber takes me through a small parlor, neat but dusty, and into a kitchen where most of the living is clearly done. I take my hands out of my pockets, without the switchblade.

He points at a chair. I sit. He takes off his coat and hangs it on a hook on the back of the kitchen door. He looks at me. I look at him.

He rolls his eyes.

– Well?

– Well, what?

– Ain’t you got no questions?

– Sure. What do you want?

He shakes his head.

– Stupid white boy. Ain’t figured it out?

I shake my head.

– I’m Percy, asshole.

He bugs his eyes and wiggles his fingers at me.

– The craaaaazy one-ahmed neegro in the bazemint is yo contact.

He unbugs his eyes.

– Now you got any questions?

– You got a smoke?

– Funny thing ’bout cigarettes.

Percy sticks a Pall Mall between his lips. He fishes a book of matches from his breast pocket, folds a match around ’til the head rests against the strip of rough paper on the back, and flicks it with his thumb. The match ignites and he offers me the flame. I lean forward and light my Pall Mall. Percy lights his, waves the match out, pinches it from the pack and drops it in the red-and-white tin ashtray between us.

I take a drag and exhale.

– What’s that?

He smokes some.

– Funny thing ’bout cigarettes and the Vyrus. Vyrus attacks anythin’ bad yo ass could care to stick in yo body. Booze, junk, rat poison, whatever it is, it can’t hurt you none. Got no stayin’ power whatsoever. No boozehound Vamps. Can’t get hooked on shit. But cigarettes.

He blows a ring of smoke.

– They always good. Just as good as if I was still jonesed on the nicotine. Which I know I ain’t. Still I crave ’em. And still they always good.

I take a drag.

– Never thought about it.

– Uh-huh?

I take another drag.

– But you’re right.

– Yep. Funny, ain’t it?

– Yeah, it is.

We smoke.

– So what you need up here?

I’ve smoked my cigarette down until the cherry burns my lips. I stub it out.

– That shit they stuck in the dogs and that enforcer.

– Yea-huh?

– What the fuck is up with that?

He puts out his own cigarette.

– That a good question.

The ceiling of the kitchen has a big, brown water stain above the sink. He stares at it.

– A good question. Lemme ask you somethin’.

– OK.

– See that man at the pool? Papa Doc?

– Yeah.

– What you make of him?

– Looked like the competition.

He gets up and walks to the refrigerator.

– Competition.

He opens the fridge, pulls out two cans of Schaefer and takes them to the sink.

– Let me tell you somethin’ ’bout competition.

He takes a couple glasses from a cupboard.

– Digga, he Luther X’s warlord. When the X got taken out, Digga, he step in, declare martial law, move his rhinos out on the street. Say, We in a state of siege. Coalition agents done assassinated our fearless leader. That two years back.

He snaps one of the cans of beer open and empties it into a glass.

– An’ he prove it. Brings us the heads a two enforcer types he say was the ones stabbed Luther in the eyes. Good enough. All the peoples think it a good idea: Close the border and tighten the belt. Digga, he gets support from all over the Hood. Harlem, Washington Heights, Spanish Harlem, shit, even the Dominicans up Inwood come to the meetin’ and stand with Digga. But, like the man say, that two years ago.

He pours the other beer.

– Time pass, people want to know, When martial law gonna end? When we have elections? When we get a new elected president? People agitatin’. Now these people agitatin’, they mostly come in one flavor, they Papa’s ton tons macoute. Them boys in the shades.

He brings the glasses to the table and sets one in front of me.

– So for ’bout a year now, they do this little dance, pokin’ and proddin’, seein’ how far they push things, see if they break. Digga, he nobody’s fool nohow. He see the pressure risin’, he look for ways to let it off. So sometimes he think it a good idea ta get the dogs in the ring. Let the dogs bleed so the people ain’t got to.