Magic Street

Chapter 3

WEED

Ceese saw Miz Smitcher looking out her window at him and saw how she was talking to somebody, and he knew without even thinking about it that the person she was talking to was his mother. "Maybe this ain' such a good idea, Raymo."

"What you saying, Ceese, you just getting scared."

"You never seen my daddy when Mama gets mad at me."

"Your daddy don't care if you smoke a little weed."

"He care a lot my mama gets upset. Whole house jumpy when mama get mad."

"So go on home to mama."

"Knows what? That you and me walking up the street with skateboards? Anybody want to look out they window, they know that. Ain't against no law."

"Miz Smitcher, she know."

"You tell her? That how she know?"

"You know Miz Smitcher! She just look at you, she know what you been doing for the last three days."

"Everybody know what you been doing, you been hiding under your bed, slapping the monkey."

"That's just dumb."

"You haven't figured out how to do it yet?"

"Too much stuff under my bed, nobody can get under there."

They laughed about that for a moment.

"I think Miz Smitcher, she call the cops," said Ceese.

"She call the cops on us, I just have to pay her a visit later."

Raymo always talked that way. Like he was dangerous. And grownups took him at his word—treated him like he was a rattler ready to strike. But in the past few months since Raymo's mom moved into one of the rental houses owned by Ceese's brother Antwon, they'd been together enough that Ceese knew better. Truth was, it surprised him that after all his brag, Raymo actually did score a bag of weed.

That was Ceese's problem now. It was easy to tell Raymo that if he scored some weed, Ceese would smoke it with him, because he thought it was like the girls Raymo was always bragging about how they liked him to slip it to them in the girls' bathroom at school or behind the 7-Eleven. All talk, but nothing real. Then he shows up with a Ziploc bag full of dry green leaves and stems, along with some roll-your-own papers, and what was Ceese supposed to do? Admit it was all fronting?

So now he had to think, was Raymo putting on when he threatened to do something bad to Miz Smitcher?

"Look, Raymo, Miz Smitcher, she okay."

"Nobody okay, they call the cops on me."

"Let's just ride down Cloverdale before the cops come and do the weed another time."

"You got it in your pocket, Ceese. You decide," said Raymo. But his smirk was saying, You chicken out this time, you ain't with me next time.

"I heard that," said Raymo.

"You spose to," said Ceese.

"You telling me I can't tell weed from... weeds?"

That's what I'm telling you all right. "No," said Ceese. "How would I know?"

"So you don't get high, you going to start telling everybody I couldn't tell weed from daffodils?"

"You can't help it, you buy fake weed."

"Just give me the bag and fly on home to Mama," said Raymo. "Dumb little—"

"No, I'm okay with it, I'll smoke it with you."

"I don't want you to," said Raymo. "You a virgin, I don't want to be your first time."

Ceese hated it when he twisted everything to be about sex. "Let's just smoke it," said Ceese, and he started walking through the wildflowers growing profusely between the road and the lawn.

"Not here," said Raymo. "Somebody pack your head with stupid?"

"You said we going to smoke the weed up by the pipe."

"On the way back down the hill."

"We got to walk all the way up to the top?"

"When your daddy call somebody to see if you really go to the top, they say yes, they saw us go up there, we rode back down."

"My daddy don't know anybody higher up Cloverdale than his own house."

Just then an old homeless man came out of one of the houses on the downslope side of Cloverdale, carrying a bunch of grocery bags, some full, some empty. The old man winked at them and Ceese couldn't help it, he waved and smiled.

"You know that guy?" asked Raymo.

"He told me he your long-lost daddy, come to see how you turn out, decide if your mama be worth—"

"Shut up about my mama," said Raymo.

admitted that—Ceese only knew because his own mama told Miz Smitcher once.

They walked farther up the hill.

Word Williams was standing at the curb, looking down the street.

"Look at that kid, wishing he was us," said Raymo.

"He ain't even looking at us," said Ceese.

"Is so."

But he wasn't. As they got closer, he moved back onto his yard so he could look around them, down the hill.

"Whazzup, Word?" said Ceese.

Word looked at him like he'd seen him for the first time that moment.

The door to Word's house opened and his older sister Andrea leaned out and called to him.

"Get in here, Word, it's time to eat."

Word looked back down the road, then glanced at Ceese as if he wanted to ask a question.

"Word!" said Andrea. "Don't act like you don't hear me."

Word turned and walked back toward the house.

Raymo was a half-dozen steps ahead. Ceese ran to catch up.

"What you talk to that boy for?"

"Look like he was having some kind of problem," said Ceese.

"Just a little kid."

"My mama used to tend him and his little sister in the summer," said Ceese.

"She ever tend that older sister?" asked Raymo. "She hot."

"She wasn't then," said Ceese. It was weird to think of Andrea being "hot." Or maybe it was just that Raymo never thought that any girl was too rich or too smart or too pretty for him. Nothing out of reach for Raymo.

"Keep up," said Raymo.

They got to the top of the hill but Raymo insisted they walk right to the end of Cloverdale, where a fence blocked the road off from the upper part of Hahn Park. You could see the place where the golf course bottomed out, like a big green bowl. Or more like a green funnel, because at the lowest point you could see where a big culvert split the grass to capture all the runoff from the rain. Ceese didn't know if that water was piped down to the little valley by the hairpin turn where the drainpipe stood up like a totem pole. So he asked Raymo.

"How could it?" said Raymo.

"It's got to go somewhere."

"They got that huge drainage up there, you think they dump it down in that little valley so that one little pipe carry it all away? That little pipe just for the runoff from below the park."

Like you know everything, thought Ceese. But he didn't say it, because there was no reason to make Raymo mad, and besides, he was probably right.

"All right," said Raymo. "People seen us up here. Now they see us ride down."

"You know I can't make that hairpin turn."

Raymo looked at him like he was the stupidest kid in the world. "We don't want to make the hairpin turn, Cecil. We want to get off the road and onto the grass and up into the trees to smoke that weed you're carrying. Or did you think you just started growing weed in your pants?"

"I just don't want to fall down on the asphalt," said Ceese. "Scrape myself all up."

"Well, here's what you do," said Raymo. "You go real slow, back and forth across the road.

And then tomorrow, when you get down to the hairpin, you can wake me up and we'll go smoke the weed for breakfast."

With that, Raymo pushed off and scooted along the level part of the road until he could turn and start down the slope of Cloverdale.

Ceese was right behind him. Hating every minute of it. Not because he didn't like the exhilaration of speed, or the rumble of the asphalt under his skateboard wheels. What he hated was Raymo going faster than Ceese ever could, while waving his arms and squatting down and standing up and even raising one leg like a stork, all the while whooping and calling out to Ceese. And though Ceese could never understand the words, since Raymo was facing away and his voice was mostly lost in the noise of the skateboard, he got the message just fine: You always a loser compared to Raymo.

He only want me around so they somebody to watch him be cool.

Why can't he ever do something just because it's fun?

Son of a bitch. I'm going to stop hanging with him. Smoke this weed, that's it, I find somebody don't think I'm dumb.

Of course, Ceese had made this resolution before, about a dozen times, but so far he'd never actually gone so far as to say no when Raymo showed up and told him what they were going to do that day.

Ceese never even hesitated. That's what his decisions were worth.

I got no spine. Had me a spine, I'd be cool too. Not cool like Raymond, my own kind of cool.

The guy who didn't need nobody. Stand alone, stand tall. Stead of tagging along like a little brother.

That's what I am. Always somebody's little brother. Got plenty of brothers, but what do I do?

Go and find me another.

By the time Ceese got to the hairpin, Raymo was nowhere in sight.

This was the part that Ceese always dreaded: stopping. He liked the kind of hill where at the bottom the road just goes straight for a long time. He liked going for the distance. But here, that wasn't possible. One way or another, he was going to end up off these wheels. He could do it all splayed out in the street like roadkill, or he could do it by running up into the grass and falling all over himself like a dumbass.

Better to be a dumbass on grass than... than...

He searched for a rhyme, even as he steered toward the place where the grass looked softest.

Than a toad in the road.

His board hit the edge of the road and flipped on the rocks before reaching the grass. Which meant that he was off the board before he had a chance to jump high enough to make sure he landed on the grassy slope. This was not going well. All he could do was try to stay airborne and roll when he hit, so he didn't come home grass-stained. Better bloody than grass-stained, he learned that long ago. Grass stains got you whipped, but blood got bandaids.

He landed on his face in the grass and flipped kind of sideways, twisting his neck so that when he finally stopped rolling down in the tall grass, he lay there for a few seconds, wiggling his toes to make sure his neck wasn't broke. He wasn't sure why that worked, but that's what the guy at school said, Don't move your neck, that just makes it worse. Instead, wiggle your toes to make sure you can.

"Look like you trying to mow the grass with your chin, fool," said Raymo.

"Where were you?" asked Ceese.

"Lying behind the hill. You sailed right over me."

Raymo broke up laughing. "I can't believe you. Complete klutz, can't ride, can't even fall right, damn near broke your neck, but you still funny. That why I hang with you."

"Yeah, but why do I hang with you?" said Ceese.

"Cause I'm cool as you wish you was," said Raymo.

"Guess that's it," said Ceese.

"You hang on to any of that weed?" asked Raymo.

Sure enough, it wasn't in Ceese's pocket. He leapt to his feet, discovering just how sore his elbows and knees were—and fully grass-stained. He was already back at the slope heading up to see if the bag had fallen out of his pocket where his board hit the gravel, when he realized Raymo was laughing. He turned around, and there was Raymo, holding up the bag.

Ashamed, both of his panic and that he lost the bag in the first place, Ceese sauntered back toward the older boy. "Who needs weed when I can get high on inertia?"

Raymo cocked his head and made his eyes go buggy. "Inertia? In-er-she-ah! You already been to college or something?"

"You took that class," said Ceese. "You learned about inertia."

"I learned about it for the grade, I didn't work it into my conversation to show off how smart I am."

"Sometimes I get tired, you calling me dumb."

"I didn't call you dumb," said Raymo.

"You always call me dumb."

"I call you a dumb-ass. But not just plain dumb."

Ceese was angry and ashamed and he hurt all over and he was going to catch hell for all these grass stains. But he couldn't afford to answer the way he wanted to, because then Raymo would beat the hell out of him and, worse, stop being his friend.

So Ceese stood there and looked at the only thing sticking up out of the grass that wasn't Raymo: the rusted-up drainpipe.

There was something moving at the base of the pipe.

His first thought was that it was some kind of animal. There were squirrels everywhere, but this looked taller, and a different color. And shiny. What kind of animal was shiny? An armadillo? A really huge wet toad?

"Where you going?"

Ceese ignored him. What kind of dumbass couldn't see he was heading for the drainpipe?

As he got closer, though, he could say that the thing he spotted from the slope was just a handle of a plastic grocery-store sack.

Then it moved, and since there wasn't any wind and none of the grass was moving, it meant there might be an animal inside it. Maybe a mouse or something. Trapped in the bag.

Well if it was, he'd set it free before Raymo even knew it was in there. Because Raymo was bad with animals.

It wasn't a mouse. It was a baby. The smallest baby Ceese had ever seen. Stark naked, with the stump of the umbilical cord still attached. It wasn't crying, but it didn't look happy either. Its eyes were closed and it only moved its arms and legs a little.

"What you got?" asked Raymo.

"A baby, looks like," said Ceese. "But it's too small to be real."

"Ain't even human," said Raymo, looking down at it. "You going to smoke or not?"

"Got to do something about this baby."

"Smoke first."

Ceese knew that was wrong. "My brother told me that weed makes you forget stuff and not care. We got to do something about this baby while we still remember it's here."

Raymo stuffed the Ziploc bag into his pocket. "You want to take it somewhere, you do it without old Raymo. I don't want nobody thinking I the daddy."

Ceese wanted to say, Only way you be the daddy is if the mama be an old sock you hide under your bed. But he didn't say it; Raymo didn't like getting teased. He could dish it, but he couldn't take it.

"I don't want nobody asking me questions, I got a bag of weed on me," said Raymo.

"It's probably nothing but parsley and broccoli or something anyway," said Ceese. "Nobody gives you good weed for free." Ceese leaned down and picked up the grocery bag by the handles.

"What you going to do with that thing?"

"Take it to Mama," said Ceese. "She know about babies."

The baby was lighter than Ceese expected. But it still felt wrong to hold it by the handles of the sack. What was he going to do, walk along swinging it like a dead squirrel?

He lifted it higher, to cradle it in his arms. That's when he saw that the baby was covered with ants inside the sack. And the outside of the sack was swarming with them. A lot of them were already racing up his arm.

Ceese set down the sack and started brushing the ants off his arms.

"What you doing, you dumbass?" said Raymo. "You doing some kind of wacko I-got-a-baby dance? Or you got to pee?"

"Baby's got ants all over it."

"I heard babies sometimes eat ants cause they need it in their diet."

"Was that on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet?" asked Ceese. The last of the ants was off him. He peeled back the sack and lifted the baby in his hands, holding it far away from his body.

"Come here and brush the ants off this baby."

"Don't go telling me what to do," said Raymo. "You don't tell me what to do."

"We got to get the ants off this baby. You want to hold it while I brush, that's just fine with me."

"I ain't holding no baby. Get my fingerprints on it? No way."

"Then brush off the ants." And then, in deference to Raymo's superiority, Ceese turned it from a demand into a request. "Puh-leeeeeeze."

"Well, since you asked like such a polite dumbass." Raymo brushed off the baby's naked limbs and trunk.

"Careful with the top of his head, babies got a soft spot."

"I know that, Cecil," said Raymo. Then he suddenly backed away, looking scared.

"What!" demanded Ceese.

"Ant come out of his nose!" said Raymo.

"Brush it off! It won't bite you."

Raymo steeled himself for a moment, then came back and flipped the ant off the baby's cheek.

"Freak me out, that's all."

"Ants probably in there eating the baby's brains," said Ceese. "Baby probably retarded now, they ate so much."

The baby wiggled and made a mewing sound. Just like a kitten.

Thinking of a kitten made Ceese pull the baby back from Raymo, because of that time Raymo took a baby kitten and stepped on its head just to see it squish. Raymo called it a "biology experiment." When Ceese asked him what he learned from it, Raymo said, "Brains be looser than liver, and wetter, and they kind of splash." Ceese didn't want Raymo to start thinking scientifically about this baby.

"Just leave it," said Raymo. "Girl who left it there, she want it dead."

"How do you know it was a girl?"

"Boys don't have babies," said Raymo. "Surprised you didn't know."

"Maybe she hoped somebody find it."

"You want somebody to find it, you leave it on they doorstep, buttgas."

"Buttgas?"

"Worse than a dumbass," said Raymo.

"Well we did find it, and I'm not going to let it die."

"No," said Raymo. "Not let it die."

That was it. Ceese clutched the baby as close as a football and started for the edge of the grass.

Raymo just laughed at him, but Ceese was used to that.

"Hey, buttgas!" called Raymo. "You know who owns this skateboard?"

Ceese looked back. Raymo was standing at the edge of the road, right at the hairpin turn, where Ceese's skateboard had flipped to. Ceese was clear down by the fancy white house at the end of the little valley.

"You know it's mine!" called Ceese.

"Don't see nobody's name on it!" called Raymo.

Ceese didn't know for sure what Raymo was about, but either he was trying to provoke Ceese into walking all the way up the steepest part of the road to get his skateboard, and then probably trying to goad him into riding it home while holding the baby—or he was planning to steal the board and taunt Ceese while he was doing it, just so Ceese would feel helpless and small.

But standing there with that baby in his arms, Ceese wanted with all his heart to be free of Raymo and everybody else like him, all the bullies who kept looking for nasty stuff to do, and always had to have an audience for their nastiness, and didn't care much about the distinction between audience and victim.

Sure enough, Raymo had been heading right for him. But he wasn't going to crash into a hedge just for a lame joke.

So he hooted at Ceese and got back out on the road. "Mama Ceese got herself a widdo baby!"

He was holding his own skateboard and riding Ceese's. Of course.

Ceese didn't say anything. Just watched him go.

Why've I been hanging with that vienna sausage anyway? Makes no sense. Sure thing I got no desire ever to see him again. Why did I put up with all his crap for so long?

Right up to the minute I found this baby, and not a minute longer.

Ceese's face burned with—what, embarrassment? Or the flush of sudden realization?

Maybe he had spent all this time with Raymo, making his mother all worried and coming close to getting into trouble a dozen times, just so he'd be at the drainpipe today, to find this baby.

That was just crazy. Who could arrange something like that, God? And God sure as hell wasn't going to use a dipstick like Raymo as an instrument of his divine will. That would be like the devil sending Gabriel to fetch his laundry, only in reverse.

When Ceese got to Du Ray, Raymo was nowhere to be seen. No surprise there. Ceese took the left on Du Ray, then the next left on Sanchez. It wasn't far. And when he got to the front door, Mama was there, holding it open behind the screen.

"Just tell me that what you got ain't yours," she said coldly.

"Don't know whose it is," said Ceese.

"You mean you don't know if you're the daddy?" There was real menace in her voice.

"I mean I found it. I don't know who the mama is. And I sure know I ain't no baby's daddy.

Less it can happen by looking at pictures."

Mama gasped. So did Ceese. He'd never talked like that to his mama in his life. Which, he was sure, was the only reason he was still alive. And from Mama's face, that was about to come to a quick end.

At that moment, the baby cried softly. Which was about the only thing that could have changed the subject from how Ceese had just said his last words.

"Inside a Lucky's bag and covered with ants," said Ceese. "It's a boy. He's alive."

"Seeing how I'm not blind and stupid, I already knew that."

"Sorry, Mama." He said it fervently enough that it might cover for what he said before.

"Before you ask, no, you can't keep it."

"It's real little, Mama."

"They get bigger."

"I don't want to keep it, Mama, I just don't want it to die."

"I know that," said Mama. "I'm thinking. Okay, I've thought. Take it over to Miz Smitcher. She's a nurse."

"Don't you want to take it?" said Ceese.

"No, I don't," said Mama. "That baby was conceived in sin and left to die in shame. Don't want no sin or shame in my house."

Ceese wanted to yell at her that the baby didn't commit any sins and the baby had nothing to be ashamed of, and what about "Even as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren" and "suffer little children to come unto me"? But he wasn't so stupid as to throw Bible verses into Mama's face.

She'd have ten more to answer him with, and no supper as punishment for blasphemy or whatever religious felony she convicted him of. The most common one was failing to honor his father and mother, even though he was the politest kid he knew of. Or maybe just the most beat-down.

Not wishing any further argument with Mama, Ceese walked to the gap in the fence they always used to get between Miz Smitcher's house and their own. It wasn't a gate—it was just a gap where two separate fences had sagged apart. And now that he was there, he realized that holding a baby made it a lot harder to squeeze through. He ended up holding the baby ahead of him in one hand, and he near dropped it.

He got through just in time. Miz Smitcher was a night-shift nurse, and she was heading out the front door to her car when Ceese started banging on the back.

"What is it?" she said. "I got no time right now for—"

Seeing the baby changed her whole attitude. "Please God, let that not be yours."

"Found it," said Ceese. "Covered with ants up in that little valley on Cloverdale. Mama said take it to you."

"Why? Does she think it's mine?" said Miz Smitcher.

Miz Smitcher sighed. "Let's get that baby to the hospital."

Ceese made as if to hand the baby to her.

She recoiled. "I got to drive, boy! You got a baby seat in your pocket? No? Then you coming along to hold that child."

Ceese didn't argue. Seemed like once he picked that baby up, he couldn't get nobody else to take it no matter what he said or did.