was only seven.
Buck was sixteen.
But I don’t remember
none of this
either.
HI, WILL.
My father’s voice
brand-new to me.
Deep.
Some scratch
on the tail of each word.
How I figured
Shawn’s would’ve
sounded
someday.
HOW YOU BEEN?
Weird talking to my dad
like he was a stranger
even though we hugged
like family.
A’ight, I guess,
I said,
unsure of what else to say.
How do you small-talk your father
when “dad” is a language so foreign
that whenever you try to say it,
it feels like you got a third lip
and a second tongue?
I WANTED TO UNLOAD,
just tell him
about Shawn,
and how Mom
cried and drank
and scratched
herself to sleep,
how I was feeling,
The Rules,
all that.
Wanted to
tell him everything
in that stuffy elevator,
but held back
because
Buck,
Dani, and
Uncle Mark
were watching
with warm,
weird faces.
I ALREADY KNOW,
Pop said,
taking a
deep breath.
I know,
I know,
I know.
Sadness
and love
in his voice.
I replied,
choking down me
choking up,
I don’t know,
I don’t know,
I don’t know
what to do.
I WIPED MY FACE
with the back of my hand,
knuckles rolling over my eyes
to catch water before it
came down.
No crying.
Not in front of Pop.
Not in front of Dani.
Not in front of none
of these people.
Not in front of no one.
Never.
WHAT YOU THINK YOU SHOULD DO?
he asked.
Follow The Rules,
I said
just like I told
everybody else.
Just like you did.
POP GAVE UNCLE MARK
a look when Uncle Mark
asked if I had ever heard
my father’s story.
Of course,
I said.
He was killed
at a pay phone.
Worry washed
over Pop’s face.
Opened his
mouth to speak
but changed
his mind,
then changed
his mind
again.
That’s not the story
we talking about.
What you know
is how I was killed,
Pop explained.
But you don’t know . . .
You just don’t know . . .
09:08:35 a.m.
WHEN MARK WAS SHOT
I was shattered. Shifted.
Never the same again.
Like shards of my own heart
shivving me on the inside,
just like your mama told you.
You and Shawn were little
and I couldn’t just come home
and be a daddy and a husband
when I couldn’t be a brother
no more.
Not after what happened.
And how it happened.
But I didn’t cry. Didn’t snitch.
Knew exactly who killed Mark.
Knew I could get him.
The Rules.
Taught to me
by Mark.
Taught to him
by our pop.
That night
I walked two blocks to where
Mark used to move,
where dirt was done.
And waited and waited
until finally a dude came
from a building,
stepped to his corner
Mark’s corner
slapped a pack in
a customer’s clutch.
Money was exchanged
and I knew that was my guy,
the guy that shot my brother
dead in the street.
I made my move.
Hood over my head.
Gun from my waist
and by the time he saw me
I was already squeezing.
POP! POP! POP!
By the third
he was down,
but I gave him one more
just because I was angry.
So angry.
Like something
had gotten into me.
THAT SOMETHING
that my pop said
had gotten into him
must be
what my mom
meant by
the nighttime.
POP SAID
he took off running
so fast his sneakers
barely touched
concrete.
Said he took
the long way,
turned pistol into poof,
turned bang-bang into hush-hush.
WHEN I GOT HOME
I took a hot shower,
hot enough
to burn the skin
off my body,
he said.
Couldn’t kiss your mother,
couldn’t kiss you boys
good night.
Just lay naked
in the scummy bathtub,
the cold porcelain
keeping me from sleep
from nightmares.
BUT YOU DID WHAT YOU HAD TO DO,
I said,
after listening to
my father admit
what I had already
known,
The Rules
are the rules.
UNCLE MARK AND MY FATHER
looked at me with hollow eyes
dancing somewhere between
guilt and grief,
which I couldn’t make sense of
until my father admitted
that he had killed
the wrong guy.
YOU AIN’T KILL GEE?
I asked,
confused.
No, I did,
Pop confirmed,
his voice crumbling.
But Gee didn’t kill Mark.
Gee was just some young kid
trying to be tough,
trying to make
a few friends,
a few bucks,
a flunky
for the guy who
killed Mark,
he explained.
Then
Then why
Then why you
kill him?
I asked.
I didn’t know
he wasn’t the right guy,
Pop said,
a tremble in
his throat.
I was sure that was Mark’s killer.
Had
to
be.
I LEANED
against the wall
next to Dani, thinking,
staring at my father who
wasn’t my father at all.
At least not like I had imagined him.
A man who moved with precision,
patience, purpose,
not no willy-nilly
buck-bucking off
at randoms
at random.
Spent my whole damn life
missing a misser.
That disappointed me.
And he stood on the
other side of the elevator
staring back at me,
wasn’t sure what he
was thinking.
Maybe that I was exactly how he had imagined.
Maybe that disappointed him.