Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

Guado! they yelled across the intersection. The fourth guy ran out to him and climbed up on the step and talked to him through the window until the light changed and then ran back through the cars.

Frankie had been out a while. He had been in and out. This nigga got me locked up. Thirty days on the Island! He had been saved after his mother had died. Oh-nine oh-nine ninety-nine. Colon cancer, beloved. Dearly beloved. But he still lived down here, around the corner from the Punjabis in the low-rise projects on Blossom. His tattoos were 777. John 3:15. A tattoo of his skin being ripped by claws underneath as if a tiger were inside him. His hands were pink from scabs as if he had psoriasis, but it was from fighting. He had a black plastic bag on the ground by his foot, which he was stepping on. He bent down and took out a bottle of Arizona Ice Tea from it, spit on the cap, rubbed it. Took the cap off and drank from it. Offered it. It’s clean.

So you been out all this time, Jimmy said as if that were a nice thing.

I went down to the World Trade Center the day after 9/11 when it was still smoking, nigga. Ain’t nothin changing but the weather.

The fourth guy started talking about the fight at the carwash again. Here’s what we do. We go over there. Over on Kissena by my house. Fuckin immigrants. You got papers? You legal? Okay, fine. Only this time I’ll have somethin on me. He demonstrated what had happened, what would happen next time, obviously a natural athlete despite what he had done to himself. Because these Mexicans were going to stick him. He darted in and pressed his fist to Jimmy’s belly. A real fast city guy. But that’s when I go for eyes, throats. I’ll kill somebody without a knife. With an elbow. He backed up and ran in swinging his fist and stopping short. Frankie and Jimmy barely noticed, laughed. He got into your face, head-to-head, insisting that you listen, saying look at me, look at me, look at me. This is what I’ll do. I’ll get me a pipe. A nice pipe. A tire iron! Frankie interjected. Yeah, one a them. You hit somebody in the head with a pipe, you know it. I’ll get up early in the morning and go down there and do it.

Frankie called him Charlie. What’s your middle name? James, right? C-J! Your last name’s French, right? C-Rock! he laughed and winked at Jimmy, who was ignoring them both, inspecting the cigarette burning down to the shamrock between his battered knuckles.

Charlie took out his two packs of Chinese cigarettes again. He would give you the shirt off his back. He put another cigarette behind his ear. When he demonstrated how he had been fighting, in the course of gesticulating, he dropped the cigarette he was smoking on the wet sidewalk at his feet, picked it up and kept puffing.

I need to get outside. It was too small. I needed to get outside where I had room. My father would have whipped a can of chew at them and hit them right in the face. A can a Copenhagen. I wanna go back there today. I should ask for the owner of the carwash and just go up and hit him right in the face. With my fist. With a Belgian brick. That would be the logical thing to do. That would take care of it, wouldn’t it? Or maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know.

But you kicked one of their’s food, Frankie said.

No. Yeah, I was mad. I kicked his food. Not him. A different one. This big one with gold all across his fuckin teeth. If I had a gun, I would of killed him. I would have killed seven of them. If I go back there, there’ll be seven dead guys. Fourteen of them. Then maybe I’ve got a chance. Self-defense is a right. But a white guy, a citizen? He beat the palms of his hands together for emphasis. What are the cops gonna do? Are they gonna listen to me, a white guy? A army vet?

He had slightly crooked teeth. Red neck. Hair in a graying high-and-tight.

You mean over an immigrant?

C’mon! Exactly. He put his hands together as if they were being handcuffed. He marched away from them and back. I’m gonna go to jail for a long time. A long time this time. The MS-13, the Mexicans’ll be there. The Chinese. I trust the blacks before I trust them. Maybe not so much. Not necessarily. I’m gonna go straight to the Aryans. Seig heil. I stand with them. Born and raised. Aryans. White power. I’ll be in jail with the fuckin MS-13—he imitated them making their devil horns, praying with their hands upside down to Jesus, Jesus save me — he imitated this with disgust. Get the fuck outta here… They don’t talk about this thing over here that happened, what they did to a girl, they shoved a pipe up her pussy, up her ass. They killed her, a poor Chinese girl. The Mexicans don’t talk about that. Oh no. Some people don’t deserve to live.

Someone coming by on the street, coming out of the bodega, scratching a lotto card, caught his attention, because he thought he was Mexican. But he corrected himself and said, Oh no, he’s Turkish. Charlie got right up in Jimmy’s face and said, Let me tell you about a Turkish guy. A Turkish guy, if he fixes your car, you’ll be back again a day later. He’ll do something to it. An Indian’ll just rob you…

Frankie said, The only cars I ever owned was a minivan and a 91 Nissan Maxima. I still got it.

I’m outnumbered! There’s too many of them. Here they come.

Falungong ladies in white and red tracksuits were coming up the street from the park where they turned the dharmic wheel, a practice for which they would have been persecuted in China. Charlie blocked the path of a shrunken Buddhist grandmother in her early seventies. When she moved, he moved. He started dancing and danced up on her, wiggling his pelvis. She was laughing. All right, he said and let her by.

Look at this nigga.

Jimmy spat on the sidewalk.

He’s fuckin whacked. The sunbather with the stabbed-up chest turned up his music player.

Dance, nigga! Frankie called.

Charlie danced up behind a Chinese guy coming out of the bodega, a hollow-chested slump-shouldered man in glasses who, sensing what was going on behind him, turned around and, laughing, exposing terrible teeth, pointed up and away with a doughy white arm, as if telling Charlie where to go. As if telling him to take the bus. They had a grinning stand-off and Charlie high-fived him. People were smiling. When this was over, the slumped man scuffed over to the other Chinese, who carried money satchels, collecting fees for the bus, and began conversing with them.

Charlie came back to the guys and asked when the liquor store was opening. Frankie told him it was opening in five minutes. Charlie said, That’s what you said twenty minutes ago. He helped a Chinese guy carry a box down the block, asking him, Is that heavy? then picking it up and saying, That’s not too bad. Then running away with it, calling back, See ya! Then bringing it back to him and saying, I wouldn’t of done that.

He’s got ADHD disorder, Frankie said. He’s got too much energy in his brain or somethin. He was in the army in Afghanistan. That’s how he wound up in jail. His wife was fuckin around. He fucked them both up, threw them through a glass window. He did two years.

I did eight years in the army. No, two years eight months and fifteen days. I did three years in jail.

You did two years, nigga.

That’s right, two years. I been stabbed. Been shot. Been there, done that. But then I got locked up again.

You got me locked up last time, nigga.

Frankie shook his large skull from side to side hitting his shoulders with his skull on either side like a boxer loosening up his neck before sparring.

Charlie pulled up the sleeve of his jersey and flexed his white arm, showing his army tattoo to Jimmy. He had been a combat medic in Iraq. Frankie said, Show him your thing, nigga. Charlie pulled up his shirt in front and pushed down his khaki shorts down off his hipbone exposing his pubic hair, showing the scar that was on his hipbone.