"To answer your question,” Bark says to me, “I’m going to my
place so we can stop being scared.”
“And you really think a gun’ll help us with that?” James says.
“I do,” Bark says. “And yes, Jimmy, that is just my opinion. But
we are talking about a ride in my truck, so anytime you’d rather
walk, I’ll be glad to pull over.”
“No need,” James says as he reaches past me to try to open the
passenger-side door—and I shove him back down, ticked off all the
more since here I am again, playing peacekeeper.
Then Bark, too, gets all fatherly:
“Okay, James. My gun will be in that glove box in front of you,
so you decide. Mississippi, or your apartment. Choose your apartment
and I will take you there. Not all the way to your building,
mind you, since your building will probably have officers in front of
“its entrance, but I will drop you within, say, four blocks of those
officers. It’s just that you need to let me know what you want now,
so I can plan the best route through this traffic.”
Then we all three sit as still as we had when we’d been screamed
at by our hoops coach. It’s like we’ve scrapped and lucked our way
this far, but now we’re all benched, losing our biggest game. Then
it hits me that what Bark told James goes for me, too—head
for Mississippi with an unregistered gun, or go home to wait for cops
to knock.
“Then I’m out,” James says. “But don’t take me to my place,
Bark.”
“Then where?” Bark says.
“My grandma’s.”
Traffic lets us move maybe three or four feet.
“In Queens,” James adds.
I roll down my window and look ahead and behind: cars as far
as I can see.
“Fine,” Bark says.
“You take me there?” James asks.
“I said I’d drop you.”
And again, we all simply sit. This, I realize, might be our last
conversation ever, and as scared as I am about the drum and the
gun, my throat catches because of plain old sentiment.
Bark clears his throat. “Obviously the story we all stick with is
that, today, none of us went upstate.”
“Agree with you there,” James says.
“Today was all about the horses,” Bark says, “for all three of us.”
“Right,” I say, and now here’s Bark, asking where James’s grandma
lives, up near Ditmars or down toward Queensboro Plaza, and here’s
James, telling Bark she’s just off Steinway on about Thirty-
fourth Ave, and now here they go, talking restaurants and clubs in Astoria
like Bark’s a cabbie James just met. There’s no mention of the trifecta
cash, not once. But I know James has it in mind because I
have it in mind.
Bark picks at an ingrown hair on his neck. James closes his eyes.
I’m still deciding if I’ll travel with Bark. My gut says play the same
card James did—insist we go minus the gun—but I can’t read Bark
for whether, with one friend gone, he’ll value his last more or prefer
flying solo.
For a moment I want to say, James, you are bailing. Then we are
whizzing ahead, and I can’t remember having rolled out of traffic,
which confirms that, for a stretch there, I lost myself in thought.
Stress, I think. Or are you just aging? Or were you thinking about
Madalynn?
Then there we are, pulling over on a street full of houses just off
Steinway, and James’s posture straightens as he points at an upstairs
duplex with white trellises without vines. Bark brakes hard
and James and I get out, and there, on that sidewalk, I wonder how
it feels to know one of your grandmothers, and I figure Bark wonders
this, too.
But Bark’s counting the trifecta cash.
“Maybe you’ll need it more than I will?” James says, though he’s
lingering right there, near Bark’s open passenger door.
Bark hands James a folded share. He snaps off another few bills
and gives those.
“For Grandmama,” he says.
James nods, pockets his share, heads for the porch. Halfway up
the stairs, he stops and turns and nods at Bark, then at me.
“Cool,” he says.
“Right,” I say, but he’s already turned to ring his grandma’s
doorbell, so I get back in the truck, closing the door as we accelerate
off.
Bark shakes his head and says, “Pussy.”
He means James, though what I also hear is that Bark is not at
all up for another request to travel unarmed.
Then he says, “You just know he’ll tell Granny about that
drum.”
“Count on it,” I say.
“The way I figure things? She takes those extra twenties and he
tells her they’re from me? Best investment I ever made.”
And again there is more than words to Bark’s words. There’s
the point that he still holds my share of our money, that money still
talks, that I’d be smart to stay on the good side of power. And already
I miss James, because James’s verbal flow always gave logic a
chance to be said out loud and considered. With Bark and Bark
only, everything’s glances and cash and manhood. There’ll be
fewer quibbles without James, but there’ll be fewer laughs.
Still, as Bark and I and his truck roll out of Queens, instinct
from somewhere, maybe the father I never saw, tells me that to
abandon Bark now would be a loser’s move. After all, Bark’s been
my man since high school. He’s found me work when I’ve needed
cash. His time spent with Madalynn, platonic or not, proves we’re
cut from the same cloth.
On the Triboro, all lanes become jammed. Silence up here
grows thorns. There’s no arguing about the truth that the Belmont
win, by assuring we’d travel in this rush hour, cost us time.
Bark clicks on the radio. A truck jackknifed, the broadcaster
says, and someone in it died. No one will budge until everything’s
chalked and photographed. I tell myself this means fewer cops
looking for us. But then comes top-of-the-hour news about a
murder in Putnam County.
“No way,” I say out loud.
Bark’s considered answer is, “You think?”
I don’t dare say a word, sure my voice would crack. If James
were here now, we’d be lectured. But now there’s no doubt about
one thing. Bark is headed for his gun.
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