FICTION

By Michael Oatman and Jackson Smith

Because every brother man’s life is like swing­ing the dice, right?

 

Pearson stretched out at the hos­pi­tal picnic table. His eyes forward. His
hair slicked back. His new heart pumping, pumping, pumping. He had
done well over this handful of months, and this little field trip was his
reward, a treat from his medical overseers—a rare attaboy during this
most dif­fi­cult time in his rel­a­tive­ly young life. His blood ran smoothly;
it no longer clung to the inner walls of his arter­ies like tooth­paste. The
wind whipped across his face, cutting, asking “does this muthafucker
deserve to even still be here?” There was no ques­tion that Pearson had
squan­dered many of the gifts that God, luck, the fates, or what­ev­er the
fuck, had bestowed upon his broad and knowing shoul­ders. But here
he was. Alive. His heart—freshly minted; undu­lat­ing away inside of his
wide, barrel-chest, just as if nothing had ever happened.

That is what the unini­ti­at­ed did not know: in the end, this life,
this world, was broken up into two simple cat­e­gories: winners and
losers—and Pearson was a winner. No judg­ment entered, just a simple
eval­u­a­tion of the facts. He was young, broad chinned, carried a devil-may-care smile, and had alabaster skin that tanned in summer. A
modern-day Viking in a world without war­riors. The heart thing …
the rarest of set­backs in his near three decades of living. A bump in a
victory lap of a life. Cat­a­stroph­ic heart failure, low cardio refrac­tion rate
… blah, blah, blah … car­diomy­opa­thy was a word that slith­ered in
one ear and oozed out the other. The doctor might as well have looked
into Pearson’s deep-set blue eyes and uttered: “Hey playboy, your heart
is fuu­u­u­u­ucked up.”

But Pearson had taken the news like he had taken life—by the
horns, no self-pity and no bull­shit. It was what it was. With the help of
his doctors, Pearson fol­lowed an endless parade of steps culminating
in a night­mare descent into the morass of the Amer­i­can Healthcare
System. What many didn’t know about Pearson was that his easy, frat-boy persona was a mask—the thinnest of cov­er­ings; Pearson was strong
in ways that could only be tested through love or total war. The high
cheek­bones, the straight nose served to cam­ou­flage the steady pulse
of his rib-banging, chest-beating heart, the gnash­ing teeth of a human thresher.

This was Pearson’s favorite time of year: the end of summer, easing
into fall. The gentle rocking of the wind and faint dusting of a July rain
shower in the dis­tance. He was built for this. Pearson pitched his head
back and slurped in the blue sky. When his head pitched back down,
Pearson’s eyes settled onto a woman stand­ing on the other side of the
street. A stump of a woman. Her leath­ery skin bunched at the edges.
Her round body strained at the seams of her cloth­ing. Blue cloth. A
nurse? A house cleaner? Pearson turned away, turned back. She still
stared. Pearson stood, wobbled as he ascend­ed. His body still searched
for its post-surgery equi­lib­ri­um. Despite this insta­bil­i­ty, Pearson could
feel a certain mag­net­ism coming from the woman. He felt his heart
wiggle and flip inside his chest. Hos­pi­tal gown bunch­ing at his knees,
Pearson took a step in the woman’s direc­tion. And in that moment, the
woman broke her gaze. She turned, stomach strain­ing against her cheap
clothes, and fled. Pearson stopped. He was not up for a low-speed foot
chase.

“Mr. Westin, Dr. White would like you to come back now. How are
you feeling?” the pencil-thin nurse said as if she’d sprung from the soil.

“Get me the fuck out of here,” Pearson said, as Nurse Ann nestled
her arm under his and guided him back toward the hos­pi­tal entrance.

Within a few minutes, Pearson was back in his bed swim­ming in
a sea of whiteness—white walls and sheets, white ceiling, and white,
implaca­ble faces. It had become impos­si­ble to measure when he nodded
off—each day was a mash-up of dream­ing, rousing, waking, dipping
back into syrupy uncon­scious­ness. As he slum­bered, images danced
passed his eyes like sugar plums—strange images, foreign.

In a flash he is running—peering through eyes that are not his own,
some unre­mem­bered land­scape rushing past. By the look of the trees,
it is winter—the foliage has depart­ed, leaving only the trees’ naked
skele­tons. In the spec­ta­tor box of his mind, Pearson can hear heavy
breath­ing, see the fog escap­ing the lips. He feels the looping, awkward
steps of an uneasy runner. And this is not a normal run. It’s a desperate
run. A run that mea­sures life and death in its balance. Sud­den­ly, the
runner slows as they come to a door. A thin black fist crashes violently
into the frame and pounds on the wood. No answer. A foot kicks in the
door frame—a body crash­ing through the wooden remains of the door.
Running again, dashing. Upstairs. Down a hallway. Into a bathroom.
Now stalk still.

Observ­ing.

Heaving.

Observ­ing.

Heaving.

Observ­ing.

Crying.

Observ­ing.

A death scream that brings thunder.

The girl. Is. Not. Moving. Her face is totally foreign, yet oddly
famil­iar. And so, now I know, Pearson thought to himself. Black skin
loses color, too, when death comes to visit. The black body gath­ered in
loving black arms—a dead girl, drown­ing in vomit. And then Pearson
hears the nurse’s voice.

“Mr. Westin?” the voice gently asserts.
Pearson stirred and woke. Back in the white­ness of the hos­pi­tal. “I
was dreaming.”

“We heard,” the nurse said with a smile. “Are you ok?”
Pearson was on his feet by the time the nurse fin­ished her question.

“Am I out of here yet?” Pearson knew the answer. He’d been counting
down the days.

“Well, the doctor has to offi­cial­ly dis­charge you. And you have to be
released to someone.”

Pearson turned his back and began to remove his gown. Wondering
if the nurse was staring at his ass, Pearson put on his under­wear, his
shirt. “Go get the doctor, would you?” He turned back. She did not look
bothered.

“You said your mother is coming to pick you up?”

“Not anymore. Get the doc, will you?”

“We have to release you to someone, Mr. Pearson.”

“Yeah? Call me a cab.”

***

This may have been the first day that Pearson felt normal—it was
a day where his body was func­tion­ing as it should and not like a rundown restora­tion project. Usually he loved bars like these, but he found
no solace in the young, upward­ly mobile women around him. Pearson
was a good PM, but his team, a cadre of coked-out new graduates,
could drive even Gandhi to pimp slap someone. He had a promotion,
a pre­sen­ta­tion on the line. And those kids were his backup. So he sat
there alone. In a preda­tor bar—the nearest to his office—sipping. All
glass inside. All blondes. A body came and flopped next to him. Pearson
barely offered a scant side­ward glance. Some black chick, twenty years
his senior, giving off every sign of working in a slaugh­ter­house. In a
bar like this? he thought to himself. What­ev­er. Either way, he wasn’t
hunting.

“You Pearson?” the clean­ing woman asked.
Pearson did not turn his head. The evening crowd had begun
to shuffle out and was being replaced by a trickle of hard drinkers,
divorced execs, over­paid accountants.

“Yeah,” Pearson tossed off.

“Pearson Westin?” she continued.

He turned to look at her more fully. “Who’s asking?”

“Dee Perkins is asking,” she said.

Pearson nodded his head, pressed his lips into a thin smile. He
widened his eyes as if to say, “You found me. Congrats.”

“You a pretty one,” she said. A state­ment, not a compliment.
Pearson smiled at the ridicu­lous­ness of a clean­ing woman trying to
pick him up. His heart wiggled and thumped.

“Good genes,” Pearson responded.

Her eyes scanned his body. Toe to head. “Got nice shoes. Nice shirt.
No tears in your jeans.”

Pearson felt his atten­tion fading. He turned his head forward. “You
can get some at Nordstrom’s.”

She put her hand on his arm. Again, it did not carry flir­ta­tion. Her
grip was tighter than he’d expect­ed. “You need a drink.”
Pearson raised his small glass. Sipped it. “Lady, I’m not feeling that
social tonight.”

“Bet I can guess your favorite.” She still had her hand on his arm.
If it got her out of there faster, then what was the harm in a free
drink? “You can buy me a glass as long as you know I’m drink­ing it
alone.”

The clean­ing woman snapped her fingers like a Roman emperor
calling for a platter. “Bar keep, bring this lovely man a Kir Royale with
rosé instead of Pros­ec­co. Is that right, Mr. Pearson Westin?”

Pearson’s head shot around, and he stared eyeball-to-eyeball with
the intrud­er, their faces inches apart. For the first time, he was looking
at her, really looking at her. He knew this woman—yes, he knew her
indeed. But from where? He raced through the con­fines of his mind.
And then he found the memory just sitting there hap­haz­ard­ly. She was
the woman from across the street. The woman from a few months ago,
staring holes into his body.

“Who are you?” Pearson said.

“Dee Perkins. The real ques­tion is, who are you Mr. Pearson? I mean
who are you really?” she said.

Pearson’s drink arrived and he stared at the small flute. He didn’t
drink it.

“I’m Pearson Westin,” he said.

“But is that all of who you are?” she gently reached forward and
placed her hand onto his chest, just over his beating, pumping heart.

“Or maybe you’re just a little bit more than that.”
Pearson felt sud­den­ly pro­tec­tive, as if he was worried she was going
to tear open his chest. “It’s mine.”

“It’s Lavelle’s. My son’s.”
There was a stone-cold silence, as the pair stared at one another.

“It was Lavelle’s.”

But Dee Perkins didn’t seem to hear him. She was trans­fixed, one
hand on Pearson’s arm, the other on his chest. “I can feel him inside of
you. LaVelle always had a strong heart.”

“What do you want from me?”

There was a short pause as Dee pon­dered the question.

“I want everything.”

Pearson took out his wallet. He slipped out three crisp one-hundreddollar bills. “It’s all I have right now. Take it and go.”

“Money,” Dee said as she shook her head. “You folks always think
it’s about money.”

Pearson started to unclasp his watch. He would have given her
any­thing to leave. Almost anything.

“People act like because a man’s life is done …” her voice carried
off. “That every­thing they were respon­si­ble for dies with them. My son
gave you your life. Reached into his chest and placed breath in yours. I
would say that that means that you owe him.”

“This is a Chopard. You could get six grand for it tonight. It’s worth
twice that.”

“No, but nigga. You owe him. Owe me.”

“You should go to grief coun­sel­ing. I’ll pay for that too.”

She grew quiet. “Yeah, that’s the thing.” She told him what she
wanted.

Pearson could feel the frown on his face, the anger that formed it. He could have killed her then.

Before she left, she said, “Keep your fucking watch. I know what
time it is.”

Car windows down, McDonald’s parking lot: Pearson ate like a pig.
He could feel the juice of the ham­burg­er drip­ping down his chin, falling
on the naked rim of his chest. He’d worn his shirt with the top buttons
undone that day. Any day he wore a button up, really. What good was
a body, his body most of all, if you couldn’t show a little skin? And that
chest, what a chest it was, filled with a rich and pow­er­ful heart. Fuck
the heart for right now, he thought as he chomped another bite of his
burger. Fuck that kid Lavelle. See how his arter­ies liked that.

And fuck his mom, too, coming at Pearson like that. Asking him for
shit, like he was the gov­ern­ment, like he had her welfare check.

Swig of diet Coke. Munch of a French fry.

It wasn’t like he’d killed her son. Hell, Pearson hadn’t done anything
more than put his name on the list. God, luck, the fates, or what­ev­er the
fuck had taken care of the rest. Because he was Pearson, and that was
how shit worked. Now this chick wanted a piece of his win­nings, like
his life meant her son’s death and not the other way around.

Pearson pol­ished off the burger and threw the wrapper out of the
window.

Of all the things she could have asked for. If she’d wanted money
or drugs, he’d have hooked it up in a second. But treat­ing him like an
absen­tee dad? Staking claim to his body? You don’t fuck around with
Pearson’s temple.

He held the fry trough to his mouth and tapped the remaining
crisps down his gullet. If only Lavelle’s mom could see him now.

He turned on his car and headed home. Her demand was lunacy,
straight loco. Vis­i­ta­tion. She wants to visit her son, she should go to
the grave­yard, Pearson thought. He had sixty, shit, maybe even seventy
years left, and he planned on seeing that chick exactly zero more times.
What did she really want from him anyway? A court appear­ance on
Judge Joe Brown or Maury?

This man stole my son’s heart!
Any­thing to say, Mr. Pearson?
Check the envelope.
Mr. Pearson … you are not the father!!

Grad­u­al­ly, Pearson’s thoughts wan­dered, his mind soothed by the
fast-food onslaught. He really should be eating better. That shit would
catch up with you. For now though, every­thing was easy. Pos­si­bil­i­ty of
pro­mo­tion. Brand new ticker. Best of all, he was still Pearson.

The wind blew through Pearson’s hair as he thought about girls he
wanted to fuck, girls he had fucked, his legacy, his two-year stint with
the Frisco Rough Riders.

His new heart, Lavelle’s heart, beat on. Cease­less­ly. Pumping
and pumping and pumping, com­plete­ly unboth­ered by calo­ries or
cho­les­terol or the white machine it kept alive.

That night, Pearson’s dreams were powered by meaty ventricles
and the lub-dub lub-dub of a black man’s inter­nal time­piece. Pearson
dreamed of places he had never been and people he had never met.
In his dream he has thin, brown arms and a fuzzi­ness at the edge of
his vision. The arms labor under the weight of a female body, a body
he remem­bers from a past dream but also from a place deeper than
con­scious memory. Vaguely, Pearson real­izes that it is cold outside. Ice
coats the streets as whoever powers his legs strug­gles not to slip on
the porch steps of a brick apart­ment build­ing. Pearson real­izes that the
body is out of breath, and he real­izes that he is sprint­ing toward his car,
still des­per­ate not to fall. The steps are foreign to Pearson; they lack
the ath­let­ic secu­ri­ty that he has been endowed with. The woman in his
arms, the girl really, is his girl­friend. Front brain Pearson, the observer
in his dream, real­izes that milk-colored vomit is seeping down her chin.
Her lips are blue. Her pupils like pin pricks.

Then they are driving. In the pas­sen­ger seat, the woman is slumped
like someone suf­fer­ing from air­sick­ness. Her head drags against the
dash­board, fight­ing gravity. Lizard-brain Pearson, the driver as it were,
knows the problem with bring­ing Keisha to the hos­pi­tal. Black man
bring­ing a coked-out near corpse to the emer­gency room? It’d be easier
to spell five to ten. And after he got there, what then? Just drop her?
This was Keisha. His Keisha. The tires almost spin out of control as he
takes a left. But he stead­ies them. This driver might not be a physical
spec­i­men but shit if he can’t drive.

He speeds through a light, and Keisha’s head loses the battle with
gravity, falls between her knees. Does he hear her vom­it­ing? Unsure.
The hos­pi­tal is only seven, maybe eight blocks away. He speeds harder
and presses his hand against Keisha’s fore­head. It’s damp and cool. Her
cheeks are the same.

Six minutes later he pulls up in front of the emer­gency room doors
of Our Lady of Divine Light Hos­pi­tal, stum­bles out of the car, almost
slip­ping on dark ice. Pearson sees the mist of his breath, but the cold
is not present. He knows that it is well below freez­ing, can see the
goose­flesh on his wiry, dark arms as he picks up Keisha—his Keisha?—
from the pas­sen­ger seat. The front brain does not deal with physical
sen­sa­tion. It watches, pow­er­less in a prison of com­men­tary, waiting as
the story plays out.

Screams echo in the open air as the emer­gency room doors slide
open. Men in navy cargo pants shoot through the door with a red-leather gurney. The men look more like para­mil­i­tary sol­diers than EMTs,
Pearson muses. The gurney looks more like a coffin than an instrument
of healing. There should be wires, tubes attached to it. Beeping things
that measure waning vital­i­ty. Some­thing more than just red leather and
metal bars. Was that all they had for Keisha? Didn’t she deserve more?

Pearson is step­ping back­ward. Whoever is pilot­ing this body knows
that he has minutes, if not seconds, to jet. The fuzz must be incoming
by now, and Lav—Pearson knows that he stands no chance without his
ride. He spins on his heels to run, his ’93 Cutlass mere feet away.
And then the sky and ground switch places. Pearson himself doesn’t
feel panic or dis­ori­en­ta­tion, but he’s sure that the body’s lizard brain
must be hissing in fear and con­fu­sion. A crack, so audible that Pearson
is sure it must be a gunshot, rips down the side­walk. The head turns,
that sono­fabitch gravity back in play, and Pearson sees pavement
stretch­ing out before him.

This is how death comes? Pearson thinks to himself. Not a drug deal
gone wrong or even a wannabe gun­slinger, but a Chris Farley slip on
black ice? A crack on the fucking temple?

Dark­ness creeps from the edge, but it does not signal a lack of
con­scious­ness for front-brain Pearson. However, lizard Pearson chirps
and rails and spits. Then it is quiet. Pearson is alone in the dark, aware
of a lub-dub lub-dub. Lub-dub. The sound of his heart spilling blood
from a severed artery. Lub-dub. The sound of blood pooling around
brain. Lub-dub. The silent scream of a brain crying out for oxygen.

Pearson slept poorly in the week leading up to his presentation.
More dreams of black arms and legs. Dreams of Keisha and his mom,
of Star Trek marathons and Sat­ur­day nights spent glued to his mother’s
tele­vi­sion watch­ing Toonami. He’s a nerd, Pearson real­ized one morning
after waking up exhaust­ed. The man’s IQ was higher than his fucking
weight.

The dreams con­tin­ued, igno­rant or uncar­ing of Pearson’s protest.
He dreamed of waiting for Uncle Andre to be released from Folsom, of
playing chess with Uncle Andre at his welcome home party. “Every­one
plays in there, Lavelle. Even the guards.” Pearson was in awe of how
easy Andre seemed. It was like he’d never lost control.

Pearson dreamed of Lavelle’s mother, with her house cleaner’s
hands and per­ma­nent­ly fur­rowed brow. The unceas­ing Dee Perkins.
He gath­ered quickly, from his own expe­ri­ences and Lavelle’s memories
(what else could they be?) that she was not a woman to be fucked with.
Lavelle’s mother was a woman with sea urchin energy. When she was
mad, you did all you could to stay out of her way. He dreamed of Dee
Perkins trying to lit­er­al­ly whip his nine­teen-year-old ass when she found
out how much he’d paid for the Cutlass. “You want to live here forever,
Lavelle? Fuck a down payment, you just busted nine month’s rent.
On a ’93? On a Cutlass?” And Lavelle backing up, hands around his
waist­band like he was a little kid again.

She didn’t take shit from anyone. Not Dee Perkins. Not from
anyone. She’d lost her job the day Uncle Andre got out of the joint. Her
manager wouldn’t give her time off, so she said, “Fuck you and fuck La
Quinta. I can get a job at Days Inn if I want it. Fuck you. I’m picking
up my brother.” Pearson saw the after­math of this. Lavelle’s mother
recount­ed it all on the phone to one of her friends. Uncle Andre smoked
a cig­a­rette on the porch and laughed to himself.

More than ass-whoop­ings and sea urchin spikes, she was Lavelle’s
mother, and he loved her for that. Lavelle could not remem­ber feeling
so loved as when his mom sat on the couch with him, their fraying,
cig­a­rette-stained couch, and watched Toonami with him. He explained
the Straw Hats’ trip through the Florian Tri­an­gle in One Piece. “So,
they’re pirates? Japan­ese pirates?” She asked.

He nodded. She lit a cigarette.

Each morning when Pearson woke, he would smell menthol
cig­a­rettes or gun­pow­der from fire­works at Fourth of July cook­outs. He
would eat his oatmeal and do his pushups, pining for a woman he’d
never met. A Keisha that loved Lord of the Rings and Akira and dressed
up as a lady Itachi Uchiha one year for Otaku Con because fuck gender
roles. Itachi was a baddy.

When Pearson had these thoughts, he touched his hair, his face,
felt the mus­cu­lar­i­ty under his shirt. Rolled up his sleeves to let the sun
ric­o­chet off his white fore­arms. His heart, if it really was his heart, led
the charge against the bat­tle­ments of Pearson’s mind. No matter where
he went, he could not escape the pulsing gen­er­a­tor in his chest that
grew more wild with each passing day. At work, on dates, in his bed,
Pearson could not shake the feeling that his heart, Lavelle’s heart, was
trying to escape its bony cage. When he walked to his car each morning,
thoughts clouded by the smell of Uncle Andre’s Elsha cologne, full of
anxiety sur­round­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, he felt as if his heart was an angry
and pow­er­ful dog trying des­per­ate­ly to escape the leash in Pearson’s
chest. A dog like his Uncle Andre’s pit bull, RZA.

However, Pearson woke peace­ful­ly on the day of his presentation.
He dressed care­ful­ly for work, opting for a slim fitting white shirt, a
calm, blue-striped tie, and a pair of navy-blue chinos. He looked in the
mirror, waited for a twang of foreign memory or burst of smell. None
came. Hes­i­tant­ly, he began to marvel at his own appear­ance. Thick,
Disney-prince biceps. Calm, daring blue eyes. He began to feel like
himself again. The world danced at his fin­ger­tips. Before he could waste
any more time, he walked out of the front door.

The ride was easy and full of sun­light. His office was full of
sun­light, too, and his sec­re­tary waited for him. All smiles. “You’re going
to do great today, Mr. Pearson,” she said. But Pearson couldn’t hear her.
As he walked toward the con­fer­ence room, he ran through the talking
points in his head, the note­wor­thy figures, and points of inter­est. He
knew the pre­sen­ta­tion by heart and could recre­ate the graphs from
memory if needed. One of his coke­head under­lings cheered him on
from his cubicle as Pearson walked down to the pre­sen­ta­tion room.
Outside of the door, Pearson held his breath for a moment. He ran his
hands through his hair. Then he entered.

“Gen­tle­men, I’m not going to waste any of your time. I know
you’re all very busy, so let me show you what my team and I have been
working on this quarter,” Pearson said as he walked toward the white
screen at the front of the room.

The spec­ta­tors, all white men wearing some vari­a­tion of the same
suit, eyed each other approv­ing­ly. Pearson passed out a bundle of
papers to each man and clicked the central button on a small remote.
The pro­jec­tor hummed to life.

“Now, there are a fe …” Pearson started. He paused when he felt
his heart give a sin­gu­lar thump. A knock on the door. Pearson opened
his eyes wide, then coughed. “Excuse me. Over the last three periods,
we’ve seen tremen­dous—” Pearson paused again and pressed a hand to
his chest.

Murmurs in the room. They knew Pearson had had a bad ticker.
Come on kid, they seemed to say with their eyes. Then, a change in the
room: a hol­low­ing of the eyes and the suits and papery white skin. In
the blink of an eye, they were no longer Pearson’s betters. They were
Uncle Andre and Keisha, Lavelle’s mother, a whole cadre of cousins and
aunties that Pearson did not rec­og­nize with his front brain. But he felt
as though he knew them. Again, his heart pulsed against the inside of
his ribs. “Go to them,” it seemed to say.

Pearson tried to form words but could not shove air through his
larynx.

“Do you need five?” Uncle Andre said with a white man’s voice.

But Pearson was already stum­bling out of the room. Somehow,
the office seemed foreign. He was unfa­mil­iar with the light, the pale
faces staring at him just ghosts. Not real people at all. The sounds were
foreign too. The bub­bling of a water cooler, the private murmurs that
hid wealth and status. Pearson felt his lizard brain whirring into motion,
his heart like a magnet being pulled to life.

He felt a coming whole­ness as he sat behind the wheel of the car.
Driving was a com­fort­able exer­cise, some­thing he could do better than
most people. It was a nice car too. Well- tended leather and a sunroof
that he opened imme­di­ate­ly. He opened the phone, real­ized he didn’t
know the pass­word, then let Face ID work its magic. He turned on
Logic’s newest and let the expen­sive speak­ers bathe him in the rhythm.
He was happy then: the music, the soft breath of wind through the
sunroof.

He put the car in drive and left the office build­ing and the pocket
suburb it occu­pied in the rearview. The air seemed cleaner as it blew
through the sunroof. Fresh. He took it cool for a few miles until he
hit the highway, then he let the engine roar. It handled easily, and he
rel­ished the vibra­tion of the steer­ing wheel. As he took the off-ramp, he
noticed that the car didn’t corner well, the way those Amer­i­can muscle
cars never did, the back end trying to shake loose on the turn. He kept
it in check though.

Fifteen minutes later he pulled up in front of a well-kept yellow
ranch house in a neigh­bor­hood full of poorly kept ranch houses.
This house was one of the few that had a lawn free of scrap metal,
dump­sters, crab­grass, or motor­cy­cles. The car door shut with a finality
that seemed fitting to the man. In front of the door, he paused before
knock­ing. After all that time, he had no idea what he was going to say.
Nothing seemed fitting.

He knocked. His fist pounded a one-two, like the beating of a heart.
He reveled for a moment in the power of his arms.

A woman opened the door. Her fists pressed against her hips. She
pursed her lips, waiting. “Didn’t think I’d see you again, Mr. Pearson.”
She said the name like it tasted bad.

“Some things never change,” the man said as he smiled. “You greet
Uncle Andre like this when he come back?”

The color seemed to drain from the woman’s face. “Lavelle?”

Lavelle said nothing but walked forward and embraced her with his
strange new body.

After the embrace, she took him inside, sat him at the kitchen table,
and began to cook spaghetti.

“Hey, Mom?” Lavelle said. “I just wan—”

She smacked her wooden spoon on the pot. “Nu-uh. There’s time
for that later. You got to eat some­thing, boy. Did I tell you Keisha’s
mom’s preg­nant again?”

She talked about her friends at the Days Inn, then she served him
spaghet­ti on a plastic plate, and then she talked about Uncle Andre’s
new job at Tyson. Despite his protes­ta­tion, she served him seconds after
he cleaned his plate.

“Hey, Mom,” Lavelle said.

“What?” she said.

“I got to talk to you.”

“Just a second.” She took him by the hand and led him to the living
room where they had once watched Toonami. How silly they must look
togeth­er, Lavelle thought. Big ass white dude and an old black lady.
People would think he was some kind of sales­man or missionary.

He sat on the couch and watched her as she began to fumble with a
stack of papers on top of an old storage bench near the front door. “You
want to sit down with me?” he asked.

“Just a second,” she said, still fum­bling. “April came by the other
day. You know April? She works over on 56th? Well, she brought some
samples of—”

Lavelle stood up and walked over to his mother. He grabbed her
gently by the shoul­ders and took her back to the couch.

He sat next to her and said, “I have to go soon, Mom, but I wanted
to let you know that I love you. It wasn’t your fault, and I love you.”

A point of light shone in her eyes, and Lavelle could not tell if it was
sadness or rage. For a moment she was just a mother again, react­ing to
a child’s willful disobedience.

“You just going to leave me like that?” she asked. “Right after I got
you back?”

“It wouldn’t be right to stay.”

“You’re better than he is. I know it.”

Lavelle stood. “Because every brother man’s life is like swing­ing the
dice, right?”

“He ain’t a brother.”

“Don’t I know it.” Lavelle looked at his body. “I’m ugly as hell.”

His mother laughed a choked little sound.

Lavelle leaned over and kissed her on the fore­head. “Tell Keisha’s
mom I hope she alright with the baby.” Lavelle stood, walked over to
the door. He looked out at the car. He was sur­prised no one had broken
into it yet. “Better yet, don’t. She’ll think you’re crazy.”

Pearson awoke from the pas­sen­ger seat of his own mind as he
was rolling to a stop outside of his house. He checked his texts. Close
to sixty missed calls and mes­sages. None from anyone that mattered.
He thought about walking inside but decided against it. The idea of
so much empty space unnerved him. He looked back at his phone. A
text from his boss, the phantom Uncle Andre. “Hey, Champ. We looked
at your Presi. All great. Figured you walked out due to heart issues.
Promotion’s yours.”

Pearson turned off his phone. He thought about people to call.
Someone to get dinner with, maybe a movie. Someone to celebrate
with. No one came to mind. He turned on AM radio, so that he could
hear the sound of another voice. He was sure that he couldn’t sit in his
car forever, but he couldn’t think of any­thing worth­while to do.
After the talk radio became unbear­able, he said, “Hey.”

No response.

A beat punc­tu­at­ed by life advice from a talk show host. A long
com­mer­cial about dish­wash­er detergent.

“Lavelle?” Pearson did not like the way his voice sounded in the
silence. “Hey, man, are you there? I just want to talk.” He said it like he
was trying to disarm a gunman.

Still no response.

Pearson thought about reach­ing out again, of falling asleep to see
if he could inhabit the other man’s mem­o­ries. But he knew Lavelle
was gone. All that was left was silence. And the quiet, steady sound of
Pearson’s heart

 

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 18.

Photo by Moritz Kindler.