Bang! Read Online Free PDF

his college friends. Or the time he took us to some girl’s place and her friends kissed us on the lips and let us see their underwear drawer. It was never nothing big that Moo Moo did with us. It was a lotta small things; nothing that cost money or took up too much time. It was just being round Moo Moo. Him rubbing my head and telling me I needed a haircut. Him dropping by school and driving us home. Or him sitting by me at Jason’s funeral saying, “You still got a brother, Mann. Me.”
    Kee-lee interrupts my thoughts. “Who’s gonna look out for me, Mann?”
    I don’t move when Kee-lee says that. ’Cause I don’t have no answer for him.
    “I mean, your father dropped me after Jason passed. But Moo Moo, he was always around. Always checking in on my mom and us; driving past the house and . . . well.”
    Kee-lee’s standing up and patting himself down, feeling around for a blunt. Pulling out a match. Striking it. I watch his fingers shake in the night. “He was my godfather.”
    “I know.”
    “We ain’t tell too many people. Didn’t want them to think we was punks.”
    “I know.”
    Smoke blows my way.
    “They shoulda shot me instead of him.”
    I don’t move. Not one muscle.
    “I mean . . . they shoulda just shot me dead and got it over with, instead of taking people from me one by one.”
    Kee-lee don’t have to explain nothing to me. I know what he’s talking about. It ain’t just his boys that keep getting killed; his daddy took a bullet too. That was long ago, when Kee-lee was seven; two years after his dad moved out.
    Kee-lee walks over to me and slams his fist into my chest. “What you gonna do? Cry?” He jumps back, toting that blunt, his eyes closed and his head rocking side to side. “Don’t do no crying out here, you baby, sissy girl,” he says, sounding like my father. “You do, and you gonna get hurt.”
    I throw a punch. He ducks. He aims for my head and misses. We boxing and talking about Moo Moo, how he taught us to fight. We laughing about the time he let us watch him make the moves on some girl. Kee-lee hands me the blunt. I take it. Smoke it. I’m glad when it clouds up my head and makes me forget about all the bad stuff that’s come my way lately. In a little while, everything’s okay. Kee-lee’s happy. I’m happy. And having Jason and Moo Moo gone don’t make us all that sad, for now anyhow.
    I go to the trunk for the buckets and lamb’s-wool rags Moo Moo always kept there, and we walk over to the water spigot, fill up the bucket and head back to the car. We take our time washing Shirlee’s tires and hood, rubbing dust off her doors and dirt from underneath her belly. Then we rub her dry. Wax her till she shines. And when he thinks I ain’t watching, I see Kee-lee kiss her, right where Moo Moo always did— on the hood of the car, right on the driver’s side.

Chapter 11
    MY FATHER found out about us stealing Moo Moo’s car. He made me stand in the corner for two hours with one leg up. My mother got mad at him. Said he was being ridiculous and she wasn’t gonna put up with him being cruel to me. They argued about it for a long time. He did what she said, though, and let me go to my room. They agreed that I wouldn’t be allowed to watch TV or go over Keelee’s place for a month. But when she went to the store after supper, he took me on a little ride.
    Kee-lee asks me sometimes why I don’t just clock my dad and get it over with. It’s coming, too. I know it. So I let my dad slide. Give him more rope than I should—for now.
    My dad’s truck is packed with shovels, trash bags, and brooms. He don’t explain why he’s got all those things. But when we get to the corner of Seymour and Lincoln, I know why. There’s an empty lot there where people dump garbage and trash, couches and dead cats, bricks and bottles too.
    He opens his door. Walks around and opens mine. “All right,” he says. “Get out. Get busy.”
    I look at the lot. I look at him.