I’d just gotten two royals – a black queen and a white king.
On a normal deck, the king would have been red, but we were playing with the stuff we passed out at rallies. The white cards were all the famous inventors and leaders of history and the blacks were ragged poor and crack addicts. Those images had never sat right with me – pride in white accomplishments was a fine thing, but tarnishing the rest didn’t seem necessary or productive.
Now, it just seemed damn unpleasant. The waitress didn’t fit on any of those cards – I’d known there were folk like her all along, but now I couldn’t shut my eyes to that truth.
Nor was this hand doing anything to keep me from thinking of her. That was the whole damn reason I’d sat down to this game.
“Raise,” Asher said.
“Call,” Thurge countered.
“Call,” I echoed, still staring at my unlikely hand. Was the universe sending me the message I wanted to hear or just beating me up for my dalliances?
Thurge whistled as the cards were flipped. King, king, queen.
“Hot damn, son,” Asher whispered.
I had no words.
“All in.” Thurge shoved in his stack.
That had me chuckling. He glared at me and repeated the words. “All. In.”
I had to admit, guy might be full of hot air, but he was bold. He could have the higher suit king and queen – it wasn’t likely but it wasn’t impossible. I’d have to interpret these cards quite differently if his luck outdid mine.
“Fuck it, I call,” I said.
The others chickened out and we flipped cards. Thurge had the higher suit king…but no queen.
“Son of a… Fuck!”
“There there, buddy,” I said.
But I was glum even as I gathered back all I’d lost. I might have won this battle, but the war in my mind raged hard as ever.
“I’m cashing out,” I said, kicking out of my seat. “You boys enjoy yourselves.”
“Don’t be a bitch,” Asher muttered. “At least give Thurge the pleasure of watching you lose a hand or two.”
“No one’s stopping you from walking either Ash. This money’s better spent getting me wasted.”
“We’re in a damn bar,” Calix grunted.
“Our bar. I could use a change of scenery.”
“Something closer to home?”
My big brother looked up, glowing with solidarity. He’d seen the storm raging behind my eyes this weekend and falsely attributed it to Mom’s passing. I felt a pang of guilt at the lie as I nodded to him, and then another echo of guilt as I remember the magnitude of what that lie was covering up. “Something like that.”
“You heading to Marietta then?” Thurgood asked, hopping up as I shuffled bills out of the pile.
I truly wanted time alone, but if push came to shove I couldn’t drape my mother’s death over me as cover. Maybe I could just stay busy instead. “Unless we have any business to take care of.”
“I got the rally prep on lockdown,” Calix said. “We’ve got to coordinate the ceremony with Pop, but that can wait.”
He glanced at Asher, who shrugged. “Those rifles you boys brought ain’t moving today. If something changes, we can take care of it.”
So much for absolving my guilt with good deeds.
“Fine, then.” I ticked my head at Thurge. “Let’s burn rubber.”
As we pushed through the bar, most guys – even the rougher ones - sent solemn nods my way. They were all giving me a bit of space, but it wouldn’t last. I couldn’t let it last.
Thurge slapped my back as we stepped out front. “I know you’ve been in a funk, but we’re going to fix that right up. A little pussy will make you remember the joys of life again.”
“Pussy’s its own problem,” I sighed, straddling Viper.
“You just need the right kind, brother.”
I started to counter, but the words rang true in a different way. Yeah, maybe that was it. I just needed to find some white girl to pound – another face to etch out the black girl’s.
“You may not be wrong,” I said.
“I rarely am. Glad you’re finally paying attention though.”
We kicked off in a cloud of dust and thundered up the rural streets and onto the highway. One after another we cut through Atlanta’s glistening spires and emerged out the other side. Buildings rose along the side of the freeway that jolted my thoughts with memories of days long past. We passed the hospital where I’d been born – and where my mom had been pronounced dead. We passed the exit that led to the leafy shaded streets where I grew up – where Pop still stewed by himself. Finally, we turned into downtown and drove up to the dive joint where I’d bought my first beer.
As Thurge and I walked up to the doors, they blew out a pair of thin young blondes in tight tank tops and micro skirts. Both of ‘em locked eyes with me until we passed.
“Jeeezus, man,” Thurge whistled. “Those two were practically bent over and waiting.”
All I had to do was turn around and ask. But nothing about them made me want to bury myself into their flesh. Hell, they looked so skinny it would be like fucking a twig.
“There’s always another hole,” I said, pushing into the dark interior. “Let’s get drunk first. Booze is on me.”
“On me, you mean,” he grumbled.
“Hell, it’s on the Soldiers’ if you want to look at it like that. White brotherhood at its finest.”
We took two stools by the bar – where it was easier to take in the situation. I inhaled a couple shots of whiskey and surveyed the battlefield. The place gurgled with the low wrung conversation. A couple people moved around pool tables, a few tossed darts, but plenty others were prowling for action too. I got a few looks back from ripe looking girls, lips parted in silent appreciation, just begging for something to be thrust between them. I loved the implication of that look, the impending victory already at hand, but right now I felt nothing for any of them. Usually I was pretty flexible on what sort of body I wanted to inhabit, but my radar was pinging empty now.
“Lot of fine young belles tonight,” Thurge said, almost slathering at my side. “Atlanta might have been overtaken by the darkness, but at least our kind held ground here.”
“Pick a girl. I’ll get her for you. Consider it payback for your donation to my cause.”
“This is fine enough condolence.” Thurge raised his drink. “I’m here for you, brother. My dick’s not getting wet unless you’re positively drenched in pussy juices, first.”
“I’m not feeling it tonight.”
“Well, then you’re goddamn blind.” He took a longing look at a plump redhead who glanced away blushing. “Whatever. There’s still light in the sky. Other options will come through.”
I gulped beer noisily. Thurge got bored of my silence and went back to his wolfish appreciation of our environment. I nudged into my drink and wondered again, why forgetting that black girl was such a tough proposition.
All my life, I’d been taught that white folk should avoid blacks whenever possible. Pop had sent me to public school, but he’d continued the education in evenings with books that set out to fix the deficiencies and misinformation they fed me. Calix had nodded vigorously through those after-school lessons but I’d mostly just sat still for ‘em. My brother had started being a firebrand for white nationalism even as a teenager, but I had only voiced my views when I was asked to.
The way I saw it, whites had enslaved blacks and now the insane crime rates that counted my mom as a victim was that boomerang snapping back in our faces. The two sides were better off apart – that part I had bought into. It was the aim that unified the Storm’s Soldiers and Pop’s civilian organization, even if their words took a more aggressive tone.
But now, I couldn’t help but notice that I’d danced with the so-called devil and returned intact and with a taste for more. That waitress was no criminal – hell, if I shut my eyes, I wouldn’t even know she was black.
Maybe it would take more than one encounter to make our incompatibilities stark.
Or maybe, that was just me working my way to the most convenient conclusion.
I’d waged this conflict with myself the whole weekend. My mind lay muddied in waters so deep, it took a while to notice someone tapping on my shoulders.
“Excuse me?”
I turned to see a dark-haired white girl plucking at me. She had a pretty face with eyes just bluer than my own. Her mouth spread in a tender smile.
“What’s up?” I said.
“My friends and I were just wondering if you boys would like to come over and teach us to play pool.”
She pointed out a small huddle of pretty girls looking bashful at us.
I took a patient sip. “What makes you sure we know how to play?”
“Well, we just figured you guys know how to handle your sticks.”
Her eyes couldn’t meet mine, and she swayed, but damned if it wasn’t a bold line.
“We sure do, honey,” Thurge said, swiveling around on his stool. “What’s your name?”
“Lily.”
“Lily, I’m Thurgood, and my friend here is-“
“Doing fine as is.”
Thurge made a pained look at me. I just stayed hunched over. The girls were hot, I could see that, but none of them were getting even a twitch out of my nethers.
“Lily,” I said. “Thurge is more than enough to handle you and your friends. You take good care of him and I promise, he’ll treat you right.”
I nudged Thurge off his stool. Lily bit her lip and glanced between me and him. Thurge always did lose out in such competitions, but it didn’t matter tonight. I wasn’t in the game. She nodded and hooked him towards their table. Thurge kept glancing back like an abandoned puppy, but he went with them and I just smiled his way until he sat encased in their warm bosom.
The guy bartending came over and cleared out my empty glasses. I asked for another and he shot me a look. He must have made out my ink. Most white folk still didn’t trust that we stood for them, and this guy probably was afraid he’d be stuck with a rampaging white supremacist if he fed me anything else. I doubted he’d be comforted even if I explained the differences between a nationalist and a supremacist. Instead, I peeled out a couple twenties and pointed at the top shelf bourbon. His worry gave way to dollar signs.
People always sold out. That’s another lesson history had taught me. You take the most fervent believer in a cause and there’s always some price that’d get him to consider taking up a new one. Was this girl doing that for me? Were those full ripe breasts and that thick cushion of rear end enough to get me to dilute everything I stood for?
Yeah, that image did nothing to calm me down. The booze haze made me let go, and I thought of every inch of her that I had sunk against. There hadn’t been a single hard edge on her – just all softness and pleasure. My jeans grew tight just at the vague memory.
Thurge roared with laughter off and I glanced at him. He had his arms sidled up around Lily at the pool table. One palm helped her adjust the cue, the other sat planted firmly around her hip. Her friends looked on with jealousy. One met my eyes, and I sank back into my glass.
Lust was lust. It was just the timing that made this all a bigger deal than it should be. My mom’s anniversary.
Would she be ok with you and this girl?
Dolores Black’s death had set a course for my life without me even meeting her. Even under Pop’s lectures, I had always wondered what she would make of the path we three had chosen.
Would Mom have gotten the same message from her death that Pop and Calix had? Not all our relatives saw eye to eye with him anymore.
They were too lost
, he’d offered as explanation. But surely a wife would share her husband’s firm beliefs.
Wouldn’t she?
I’d never been able to land at a firm yes.
A girl screeched, and I snapped to the sound to see Thurge suffocating the voice from Lily’s mouth with his tongue. The two wound together tighter and tighter, but all it reminded me of were the coils of that fresh white blanket as me and that black girl writhed tighter and tighter together.
Fuck it. No man had a right to judge my desires. Not even Pop or Calix.
I knew exactly what kind of girl would make me happy tonight.
I paid my tab, threw a few words into Thurge’s ear and stepped out into the night to go find her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Meagan
I’d been on duty a couple hours when a motorcycle engine thrummed up to the
Volcano
. My heart leapt to my throat as it always did now, and I had to tell it to shush. We’d gone through this a half dozen times already just tonight.
Still, when the door jingled open, I peeked over from the table I was serving.
It was him.
Kiara was working up front, but he brushed right passed her and homed in on me with those eyes. I remembered them as they had been, catching dim rays of moonlight as his body bore down on me. Just watching him sidle my way with all that strength had me warming up inside. He came right up and checked me out bottom-to-top. By the end, he had on a crooked little smile that just about stopped my heart.
“Hey,” was all he said.
“Uh, hello sir,” I responded, mindful of the customers seated next to me. “Would you like a table?”