Bang! Read online

  “Never?” Kee-lee says, jumping outta the car and snatching the phone from me. “My mother’s gonna kill you.”

  Kee-lee puts my dad on speaker phone. My father says that his mother knows all about it. That him and her agreed that if we stayed in the neighborhood, we’d get shot dead.

  “But we gonna get killed out here too,” Kee-lee says, pointing up the road. “A truck almost done us in. Lightning almost hit me in the head,” he lies.

  Amy keeps asking what the problem is and how come our parents won’t come and get us. I don’t answer because I’m listening to my dad. “I put a cell phone in the brown bag. You can use that when you need to get in touch.”

  “We ain’t got the brown bag. I left it,” I say, walking a few steps, then back, then up again. I whisper. “There was a gun in that bag.”

  My dad tells me that his grandfather was sixteen when he took an eighteen-hour train ride from Georgia up north all by hisself. I tell him that this ain’t the olden days.

  “He didn’t have enough money for the trip at first, so he had to earn it. Pick cotton. Slop hogs. Husk corn.”

  “Come and get me!”

  “Yeah,” Kee-lee says into the phone.

  My dad says if I do this, I’ll never be scared again. I’m quiet. Thinking. “You scared . . . all the time now.

  “You walk a hard enough road, and it’ll make you a bitter man—I mean, a better man,” my dad says.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Just something I read once.”

  I’m sitting down. Watching Kee-lee slide into the front seat next to Amy. Listening to the radio go from country, to opera, to rap. “How far are we from home?”

  “Two weeks by foot,” my father says. “You can do this.”

  “Little boy,” Amy says, “I have to go.”

  “We ain’t got no way to contact you,” I say. “We ain’t got the bag.”

  Kee-lee pulls out the bag. He takes out the gun. “Nice, huh?” he says to the girl.

  She starts the car up. “Get out! Now! And give me my phone!”

  Kee-lee’s laughing. Thinking it’s funny. Pointing it her way. “We ain’t gonna hurt you, girl.”

  Amy’s screaming. My father’s asking me what’s going on. “Nothing. We gotta go. We’ll call later.”

  I throw the phone at her.

  She’s fingering the numbers. “I’m calling the police.”

  Kee-lee grabs the brown bag, then reaches down and knocks the phone out Amy’s hand. I grab the backpack and take off running. “Don’t call the police! Please don’t call!” I say, running into the middle of the road, almost getting run over by a truck full of cows.

  Chapter 31

  “WHAT’S THAT!?” Kee-lee’s almost sitting in my lap. “And that?” He’s holding tight to the brown bag. “I can’t see nothing. Light a match! Start a fire!”

  I’m feeling round inside my backpack, blinking my eyes. Striking a match. Watching it go right out.

  Hoo . . . hoo . . . hoo . . . Owls have big eyes. Big mouths too. Hoo . . . hoo . . . hoo . . .

  Bang!

  The gun is so close to my ear I can’t hear nothing for a few minutes. “Kee-lee!”

  Bang!

  Kee-lee’s shot the owl. He’s shot something that ran past our feet too. I think it was a possum. Its insides have busted and spilled out like sloppy joes made with too much sauce. Smoke from the gun floats like steam. My whole body’s shaking, like it did that time I had a fever and my mother made me sit in a tub of ice.

  “Call my mother,” Kee-lee says. “Call my mother now!” He’s got the gun pointing at me. His finger’s on the trigger.

  I hand him the cell. He don’t take it. He says for me to dial his mom. He’s almost in tears when I put the phone up to his ear. “It’s dark. And we ain’t got a bed, or tent, or nothing.”

  I turn the flashlight on. Walk over to a tree bent down low. I break off branches and pull off flowers and make a tiny teepee with them. Kee-lee’s mother’s saying what my father said, I guess; because he’s trying to get her to understand that this ain’t right. That they don’t know what it’s like being out here alone. I pile leaves in the middle of the teepee and light a match.

  Kee-lee’s screaming at his mom. “How we gonna call you? The cell phone’s almost dead.”

  He’s threatening her. Holding the gun in the air and waving it. “I’m going to the police then,” he says, walking back and forth. “Telling them how y’all treating us.”

  His mom hangs up on him. I call Cousin. His line is busy. I call my dad again. I ask him to come get us in the morning. I forget the name of the road we’re on, but we can get someone to tell us. At first I think he’s coming, because he asks if I left a trail on the way in. If I saw any guideposts. Then he says what he said before, what Kee-lee’s mother said: “You gonna be all right.”

  Kee-lee and me keep seeing things: short fat things running deeper into the woods like they being chased. Big things—wolves, deer, a baby bear even, at least that’s what we think. “Something’s gonna eat us out here.”

  My father laughs. “Where you from, boy?”

  Before I can answer he’s asking another question. “Where are you at?”

  I look around. “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah you do.”

  I try to give him the answer he wants. Before I do, he’s asking more questions.

  “Would I do anything to hurt you?”

  I ain’t sure.

  Kee-lee sits by the fire, pointing the gun at a deer stopped across the road.

  “Don’t . . .”

  Bang!

  When Jason got shot, his eyes got big, just like that deer’s.

  “What the . . .”

  My father wants to know what happened. I tell him that Kee-lee shot at a deer and missed. He says for me to put Kee-lee on the phone. When he’s done, Kee-lee puts the gun in the bag, the bag inside two T-shirts, and the T-shirts in the bottom of his backpack.

  “You’re on an adventure, boy,” my father tells me.

  I whisper so Kee-lee don’t hear. “I’m lost. Scared.”

  “When you were here, you were lost . . . a boy who was gonna die a boy.”

  “I do all this,” I shout, “and get back home and still they might just kill me.” I remind my dad that stuff like that happens all the time. Somebody joins the army. They get out, come home, and get shot for sneakers or a jacket or a dime the crook found in the corner of their pocket.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Stuff like that can happen. But—”

  I push the power button. I take the phone and throw it as far as I can.

  Kee-lee takes off after it. “Why you do that? Now we can’t get nobody to come get us.” He don’t go far. He’s too scared.

  I throw more sticks in the fire. “It don’t matter. Nobody’s coming for us nohow.”

  Chapter 32

  NOBODY’S GONNA pick up two black boys hitchhiking with tall sticks in their hands. Only we need the sticks to help us climb the hills. And ain’t nothing we can do about being black, or about the fact that we got baggy, red eyes from not hardly sleeping three nights in a row. This here’s farm country, so it ain’t our fault either that people slam doors in our faces soon as they open them and see what we look like. Only maybe it is a little bit Kee-lee’s fault. When we got to the second farm, instead of saying hello when the door opened, he said, “You got any food, lady? Any money?” The woman slammed the door. So did the next lady. So we still out here— ducking from police cars. Hungry. Not in no real bad mood though, ’cause when it’s daylight, it’s not that bad. We wrestle. We race each other up the road, or beat rows of corn with sticks and pretend it’s my dad’s head we’re whupping. But we stay hungry even though one lady does fix us a sandwich, though she makes sure we ain’t eat it on her property.

  We’re by the shoulder of the road, kicking gravel and trying to get truckers to blow their horns. “I’ll race you,” Kee-lee says. “Ready. Set . . .”


  “Go!” we both say, balling up our fists, straightening our backs and running up the road like somebody’s handing out free sneakers.

  Kee-lee’s in front at first. Then it’s me, sticking my legs way out, throwing my elbows back and smiling when the trucker yells, “Take ’im. Take ’im. You know you can take ’im.”

  Kee-lee gives the guy the finger. And just when I’m set to pass him, he gets ahead of me, pushing me into the middle of the road right when a beat-down black pickup truck goes by. The driver swerves. He almost rolls over my foot. I fall to the ground. Kee-lee comes to check on me. I jump up and take off running fast as I can. Laughing. Smelling something sweet like apples or peaches even. That’s when I see the sign. FINNEGAN’S APPLE ORCHARD. I don’t tell Kee-lee nothing. I fly across the road, looking to my left at rows and rows of short, leafy green trees with fruit hanging from them. Ignoring Kee-lee. Licking my lips. Rubbing sweat off my neck and arms. Thinking about all that fruit. “So that’s what a real apple tree looks like, huh, Kee-lee?” I slow up.

  “I . . . I . . .” Kee-lee can’t hardly breathe.

  We’re sitting on the guardrail, fanning car smoke out our faces, staring at trees. “I bet. I bet they taste good.”

  He looks at the trees. There’re rows and rows of them. “Real good.”

  I look at Kee-lee. “It ain’t chicken.”

  He laughs. “Gonna taste like chicken to me.”

  We both step over the railing at the same time, dropping our stuff and running through hard brown grass that crunches under our feet like dry macaroni. Kee-lee bites into an apple and drops it to the ground. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.” He snatches another one off the tree. I’m doing the same thing: grabbing, biting, dropping, and swallowing sweet, juicy chunks so big they stick in my throat. It ain’t chicken, but it sure is good.

  Chapter 33

  “WE GOTTA GO.”

  “I know.”

  “Now,” Kee-lee tells me.

  “I know. But I can’t. Not yet.”

  I’m standing next to an apple tree with my pants pulled down. I got the runs. Been going for forty-five minutes and I ain’t got no more toilet paper—just leaves that itch and burn me. Only I can’t scratch because I can’t stop going, and going is making my insides bubbly and that’s making me fart and it’s stinking out here real bad. “Kee-lee. I need some water.” My lips are cracked and dry.

  “I ain’t coming over there,” Kee-lee says, squeezing his nose. “You stink.”

  I’m rocking, rubbing my stomach. “I think something was in them apples.”

  He says he ate them and he’s not sick. He digs in his bag and pulls out his last reefer. Things been so crazy, he forgot about getting high. “Smoke this. You’ll feel better.”

  I tell him no. He lights up. Lies back on the hill. Looks at the sky and listens to me fart and poop and “Aaaahhhhh.” I hold my stomach. Feel my insides twist and knot and squeeze. I’m thinking that maybe the farmer put something bad on ’em so kids wouldn’t steal ’em.

  Kee-lee’s opening his backpack, pulling out paper and paints. “I’m gonna paint you. Right under that tree.”

  “Don’t you . . .”

  “Gonna call it, Boy Crapping Under Apple Tree.”

  “You ain’t got—you ain’t got . . . aaaaaah. Keelee. Kee-lee. It hurts, man.”

  Kee-lee thinks it’s funny. He’s sitting on the hill with the sun behind him. Using water from the creek to wet his brushes and water the paints. He’s smoking weed, leaning his head sideways. Telling me he’s gonna get this just right.

  My stomach starts up again. Kee-lee says for me to stop crying. “Babies get the runs all the time and they don’t die from it.” He walks over and hands me a bottle of water he filled at the creek. “Wash your hands when you done. They got stuff on ’em.”

  I look at my fingers, at the leaves and crap on the ground. I pour the water over my head and lick it off my lips. I wash my hands, then drink the rest. But that just makes my stomach cramp more. But a few minutes later I’m better, so I walk over and lie down by Kee-lee.

  “I need real food,” he says. “Apples ain’t roast beef, you know.”

  I hear him talking, but my eyes are closing. And when I wake up two hours later, the sun’s almost down.

  “Mann,” he says, pushing me. “Look what I done.”

  I push him away.

  “Look.”

  “I don’t wanna see me under no tree with my pants pulled down.”

  “Look.”

  I turn his way. There’s a zillion bushy green trees covered with apples. “You like apple trees?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw all that many before, until now.”

  His apple trees ain’t exactly like the ones here. They’re softer. Like watery-red teardrops. His trees are taller; stronger. And they ain’t sitting on a farm, they growing outta concrete right next to my house and his. They sitting on rooftops. Pushing right through people’s ceilings and growing in stores that sell sweet potatoes and chewing gum, Mary Jane candies and forties. It sounds funny. But it looks kinda nice. “What you call it?”

  He holds the painting up to the sun and stares. “Stone Apples.”

  “What?”

  Kee-lee points to the cracked pavement, then to a boy sitting on the steps playing with a gun.

  “Oh. I missed him.”

  The boy’s smoking weed and sitting under an apple tree that’s got long skinny branches hanging so low he can pick one of them juicy red apples off and eat it, if he wants.

  “Nice,” I say, feeling my stomach bubble. “What you gonna paint next?”

  His fingers are green. His T-shirt’s got brown and red stains on it. We’re running outta paper. He picks up the last piece and looks at me.

  I say, “Go ahead.”

  Kee-lee’s brush moves across the paper and a lake shows up. Red birds fly and bluebirds stick their beaks down their kids’ throats, feeding ’em worms. His brush shakes and raindrops fall. It scratches the paper and dips in the water and the sky turns dark blue and the moon gets as yellow as a lemon iced cookie. He’s quiet a long time. And when he’s done, I sit straight up. It’s his best picture ever. “Save it. Show Mr. Titchner when school starts back up.” Titchner’s our art teacher. He said that Keelee’s the fastest painter he knows. “And when you’re done,“ he said once, “you leave mini masterpieces behind.”

  Kee-lee must be tired, ’cause for a while he lets that one slide. Or maybe he just can’t talk, like me, only watch the sun setting and the whole sky burning reddish orange, making the apples look like they on fire.

  Kee-lee sticks the picture on a branch. “Naw. I’m done with school.” He sits down. “When I get back home, I’m gonna draw a bunch of these and sell ’em.” He lies back in the grass. “Keisha’s gonna like me then, when she sees all that dough.”

  I look at his teeth and think about Keisha. She don’t want you no more than my father wants me, I almost say.

  Chapter 34

  IT AIN’T RIGHT what my father did. It’s been more than a week since he left us, and we’re nowhere near home. I’m thinking that even before I wake up. So when my eyes do open and it’s pitch-black out, I get even madder. I feel around for Kee-lee. He’s snoring. Lying right next to me. Scared like me, I bet. I blink. I listen to traffic and to my stomach growling. “Kee-lee.” I push him. “I wanna go home.”

  “Stop touching me.”

  I push him again. Let him know that the law don’t allow parents to make kids do nothing like this. I sit up and look around. “It’s not right.”

  “You just figuring that out?” He sits up too. Says that maybe we should find us a telephone. He stands and stretches. Holds his arms to the sky and yawns. “We learned our lesson. Let’s tell your dad that.”

  I follow him up the hill to the road. We jump over the guardrail and sit on it while trucks fly by. We walk in the dark for a good long time, using passing headlights to show us the way, hoping we d
on’t end up roadkill. By the time we see restaurant signs and gas station lights, my feet are burning and Kee-lee’s talking about suing my dad for abuse.

  Things look closer than they really are. So it takes us another forty-five minutes to get to a town. When we get there, most everything’s shut down. It’s just lots of neon signs, closed buildings, and people driving by fast in cars that ain’t stopping for two black boys.

  Me and Kee-lee sit down on the ground in front of pumps at a gas station. We’re breathing so hard you can hear us sucking in air loud as them machines that breathe for people in the hospital. “Kee-lee . . . We . . .” I ain’t got air enough to say nothing more.

  We keep still and quiet for a while. Then we stand up and start walking. The restaurant over there is open. It’s got trucks pulled up to the back and a sign that says OPEN 24/7.

  “How we gonna pay?” Kee-lee asks.

  I lick my lips. “We ain’t gonna eat. We just gonna ask to use the phone.”

  He takes off his backpack. Pulls out the brown bag and holds up the gun.

  I step back.

  He rubs the pistol on his leg. “I’m hungry. And I’m gonna eat.”

  “If you planning on doing that, I’m not going in.”

  He’s smiling. Looking at the gun like it’s a whole lot of money or a watch with big diamonds on it. “I ain’t eat in too long. And I’m hungry. And if they don’t feed us, or they call the cops ’cause we can’t pay . . .”

  Bang!

  I think about Jason, dead on the porch for no real reason.

  Kee-lee sees the sweat on my nose and the way I can’t hardly stand up good, and the gun goes back into the bag and the bag goes into the backpack and we head for the restaurant.

  The woman at the counter frowns. “Y’all want something?”

  Everybody stares.

  “Ma’am, can we use your phone?”

  She points to the wall by the men’s room. “Cost is two quarters.” She turns around. Picks up two plates and takes ’em to a table where six men can’t stop staring at us.

  Kee-lee steps on the back of my sneakers and makes me trip. “What you gonna tell him?”