YNs

1995

Construction knives carved into the tennis balls like slices into limes. Each ball received two baggies of five grams of powder cocaine. The cut remained along the seam, which made it easier to reseal. Vardajario Jenkinson, 15 held them in his hand and walked towards his Schwinn BMX bike lying on the pavement outside of his house in South Bridge, Wilmington, Delaware. He picked up the bike and steered it out into the street. With agility, he balanced the tennis balls in a Jansport bag and guided his chariot.

Mertavius Brocker, 17, joined his left and Cornelio Decker, 12 his right. The three of them rode in silence, the spinning of their wheels humming in the late evening. Like paperboys on routes, they threw the tennis balls with precision and grace. Their incalculable accuracy led them to throw the balls overhead and watch them fly past with devastating excellence. Jenkinson observed the streetlights coming on and the hum of the lamps. The dampness of the streets after the summer rain didn’t deter them.

After the last ball found its home in the driveway of one of their fellow dealers, they circled back to Decker’s house.

“We made good out there, though,” Brocker acknowledged.

“We should get at least $75 for each drop.” The couriers sat around a brown wooden table while a fan wheeled around on the ceiling. Jenkinson looked at the time on his watch. “Alright, we’ve got to reup, relocate and keep everything within the time it took us to deliver the product.”

The two other boys nodded as if a Marine sergeant had just issued an order to two lance corporals. Their bodies matched their minds; lithe and clear, they knew how appropriate their game had been.

All three raised. Darkness had fallen and they walked outside to see their bikes stolen.

“Goddamnit!” Brocker exclaimed.

“Don’t do that. You can say it, but don’t shout it,” Jenkinson admonished.

The three of them journeyed to the back of the house to see if anything had been stolen from the backyard.

Brocker stepped a few feet past the folding chair with the rust on the bottom. He ventured further. The other two boys waited under a lamppost.

“You know that these orange men are out to get us, right?” Decker spoke.

Jenkinson stared at the little passageway between the houses. Brocker stepped once more and then heard a pistol jam right next to his neck. He turned around and saw a ski masked kid no bigger than he. The click of the firearm still rang in his consciousness. With the ensuing struggle, he ripped the weapon from the assailant and began pistol whipping him. Again and again, he struck his opponent with prejudice. Blood trickled. Brocker ripped off the ski mask. “Lutuvius!” He didn’t shriek but out of fear and confusion, just looked at the young man.

The body slumped at his feet as he saw more blood gush forth from thirteen-year-old Lutuvius Stratton’s head like oil mucking upward from the earth. Brocker’s eyes widened as his heart became a bass drum slammed by a member of the drumline. He dragged the body to a place behind an above ground pool. The blueness of it matched the light-skinned boy’s color as life drained from him. Brocker looked around. A cover for a child’s ball pit lay just a few feet away. He dragged it over to hide Lutuvius. He walked back and retrieved the gun which malfunctioned. He picked it up and tucked it in his waistband. Once he journeyed back to his two friends, they had relinquished their posts under the streetlight and talked to some girls down the block.

Brocker checked his clothes for any blood traces or scrapes. He remained clean. Sweat glistened on his head and he breathed heavily. He covered the pistol with his shirt and moved towards his friends. With each pump of his legs, the sight of Lutuvius’ face flashed on his consciousness. His body dropping to the ground played in the cinema to his mind’s eye. The theater brimmed with Lutuvius figures. The flicker of the light on the screen displayed the cover to the child’s play set. With every push forward, his mind reeled.

The distance remained a few yards away but the specter of Lutuvius haunted him. When he had finally reached his comrades and the girls, he had to plaster a smile on his face to not let them in on what just took place.

“Hey, Mertavius….” Ananda Small’s thirteen-year-old sweet voice called.

“Hey, M,” Zora mentioned, smiling. She was fourteen.

“Hey.”

“Hey, where were you? What were you doing?” Decker asked.

“I had to find our bikes. I had to make sure the coast was clear,” Brocker explained.

“Back there? Clear from–– you know what, never mind,” Jenkinson declared. “Alright, we’re going home. We’ll go to a bump over at the rec center. We’ll buy new bikes tomorrow.”

“Cool,” the girls giggled in unison. “Bye, y’all,” Ananda called.

While walking, Brocker kept silent along with the other two boys. But his mind blazed. The idea of him killing one of his acquaintances enveloped his flesh, bone, and blood. The click of the gun, still in his waist, resounded in his mind as well. Click! He winced.

“You alright, man?” Decker asked.

“I’m alright,” Brocker replied.

The three of them came to the point in the street where they divided in three directions to their respective homes.

“Okay tomorrow, we’re back with the tennis balls and our bikes. We should clear five hundred for the week. That’ll be enough to cover what they took from us,” Jenkinson announced like a color analyst.

They split. Decker and Jenkinson ambled away without effort as their figures disappeared from view. Brocker flew solo on his Nike vehicles. Blood and dust commingled in his mind and he struggled to cover the ground to his house. The entirety of the situation wrested at his soul. When he thought of the eyes rolling back he almost walked into a car. He swerved and the car’s horn blared. He stopped on the lawn of one of his neighbors. He sat on the edge of the curb, the gun burrowing into his belly. He cried. The owner of the house noticed movement outside his doorstep.

“Boy what’s wrong with you?” Hamill Westing asked. He possessed a face that spelled thirty years less than his sixty summers on planet Earth. He wore jeans and a polo shirt and sneakers.

“What is it son?” Westing leaned in to help Brocker onto his couch. “What’s going on that you can’t tell me?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the one standing between calling the people on you.”

Brocker sighed with great heft. He felt the pistol against his waist. It felt cool.

“You need to speak up now, or I’m calling somebody. You have parents don’t you? Where are they? At work? Home? Say something, boy!”

“I can’t…I….” Brocker struggled.

“Alright, you come inside. I’m going to get you some water. You have a seat right here.”

Brocker saw the man leave to go to the kitchen. He also heard floorboards creaking like broken bones cracking in the night. “Hamill, what is all this noise––” A woman the same age as Westing emerged from their bedroom in a blue house frock. She leaned her head into the kitchen and then saw the back of the boy’s head. Brocker turned to her with tears in his eyes.

“What’s the matter, baby? Y’all woke me up and I’ve gotta go to work in the morning. What’s wrong, now?” Angela Westing asked, sitting on her couch.

Brocker didn’t say a word. Hamill returned with the water.

“I’m glad you’re still here. Here, drink this. It’ll clear your mind.”

“What is it, young man? Speak up so we can help you.”

“I’ve seen a man die.”

Westing and Angela exchanged glances.

“Okay, where? What man?”

“He wasn’t a man.”

“You’re not making sense. What’s your name?”

He didn’t answer.

“Alright…we’re getting somewhere. Who is it that you watched die?”

“This kid,” he fought through tears. “I knew him…he tried to kill me.”

Angela and Westing stood to their feet.

“This is a job for the police. We need to call,” Angela mentioned.

“Wait!”

Angela had already dialed the 9-1.

“Yes I am making a report of a homicide. East Side of Wilmington, Delaware.” She provided their address.

“They’re going to hash all of this out for you,” Hamill reassured.

Mertavius shook his head. He reached for his waist and withdrew the pistol and ordered the couple to get down on the ground.

“I’m going to go out this door and you are both going to stay on the floor or I’m going to turn this place into a Rambo movie.”

Westing and Angela held their hands out stretched with their stomachs on the ground. Mertavius backed away with the weaponed trained on them. He opened the door, and sped away on foot. He cursed himself. “What were you thinking?!” Now, he was knocking the gun against his head with one hand as the other patted his chest. He kept walking. Blue and red lights pulled up to the Westing house. He picked up his pace but did not run. He slid through alleyways with his legs shooting out in front of him like he was losing weight.

He crossed over to the West Side away from any activity as it was going on eleven o’clock and the streets remained quiet as whispers.

The whole time, he regretted the whole excursion. He wondered in his mind if he just sat down with the cops and explained what happened, he would be let go. As a minor, he would’ve been granted clemency. All he had to do was admit that it was in self defense that he killed Lutuvius. His mind didn’t let him think. It was more like ruminations than thoughts. Like a spool of film unraveling and then being put in a projector, the events of the day had played over and over. He felt the heat on his neck and tried to think of the fact the body cooled itself with sweat. What cooled the mind? How could he escape from the horror of knowing that he took a life? The sound of the wheels spinning under him and the slickness in the alleyways made the picture playing in his mind oscillate and warp and speed up and slow down, too.

When he had gotten to a place where he had cleared and found a group of clientele in a smoker’s circle, he looked at one woman lying down laughing.

She grasped at her belly, swollen with potential life. He thought about going on a train. He still had one tennis ball left. He slowed down and threw the pistol in a sewer. He then entered into the presence of the customers.

“What do you want, boy? You have that ready rock?” Beneficent Anders asked.

“No, I’ve got powder, though.”

“Oooh, I’ll take that.”

“It’s fifteen a piece. I can sell it to all of y’all.”

The two other figures encroached. Hudson “Bluesy” Reynolds and Reston Pock withdrew their crumpled dollars. Brocker made forty five dollars in seconds. He hopped back on, regained himself and stepped towards the train station.

“Alright! Thanks!” Beneficent called to him, she cackled with twisted, poisonous delight.

He reached the bus station and walked onto the place where a few people dotted the scene. A patrolwoman walked the beat. She moved slowly like her next perpetrator meant her next meal. Brocker just looked at the different trains going by before his eyes. His mind played the scene again. He could only feel heat on his neck again as the monotonous image and the sound of Lutuvius’ head splitting open broadcast into his thoughts. The summer night had been heavy with humidity and the sweat from his t-shirt looked damp against his bird chest. He waited for his bus to arrive. A one-way to Dover, Delaware. He continued to sit. He sat down with the weight of the world dragging his soul down into the seat. He started to nod off from the buffets of the day. The screen in his mind darkened as he slipped into the dimness of unconsciousness.