Getting Bigger

by Matthew C. Funk

After school, Collin went to where the man on the phone had told him to go: The abandoned community center crusted at the mouth of Desire Parkway’s Projects. The man had told him she would be there. Collin would have walked into Hell.

Same difference, he thought, trudging into the sweltering ruins.

Kids were splayed or crouching in the sun. The bare trees and blistering graffiti provided no shade, just mad scratches on the husks of the yard.

Heat was a sullen and hunkered thing in Desire’s summer, like being in the slaver of an animal waiting to take a fatal bite. Every drop of sweat it bit from him made Collin feel smaller. He looked for his friends.

And there she was: Sky. Seeing her put a breeze through him.

Sky was over with Nony and some younger kids-ten- and twelve-year-olds, looking tiny under the kettles of their crooked ball caps. They clustered around something near the overgrown yards that corralled the center.

“Man up, dumbass,” Nony called to something the kids were grouped around. “Come on, you can do it.”

Collin ambled up. Sky stared at him but did not brighten as usual. Her hand was trembling by her tight pink shorts. He considered taking it, but his fingers felt so small.

“What you fools up to?” Collin asked and made fists.

Then he saw-a little mutt, chained to a tree. It had only inches of slack, enough to either stand or huddle. Someone had put a popcorn tin filled with water just out of its reach. The mutt was beyond whining; just blinked its muddy eyes.

Nony chucked a stone at it from the handful he had. It inspired a shudder of pain from the dog.

“Where’s your fight at, man?” Nony grinned his huge gold teeth at the dog. “You don’t want your water?”

“Stupid dog,” said one of the kids. Collin felt a bleak anxiety welling up in him, formless but fierce.

“Damn right, he a stupid, little dog.” Nony shook his head and stretched his body to full, fifteen-year-old majesty, his wifebeater on him like a mantle. “He got no love for his life, little homies. He don’t want it enough.”

“Come on, dog,” Sky whispered, hands flexing, eyes urging.

The dog didn’t move. Nony’s next stone hit its back and won a yelp.

“Come on, little man!” Nony yelled. Humor had begun to twist into actual anger.

“Nony.” Collin’s voice was buried under the feeling in him

“Get up and get your water, boy!” Nony chucked another stone. The mutt started up, tugged for the bowl, and collapsed in front of it, panting, eyes and mouth running.

“Nony,” Collin said louder.

Nony and Sky looked at Collin. Sky pressed closer and Nony forced a smile. An instant later, anger yanked his features mean and pulled his focus back to the mutt.

“You believe this little pussy-ass dog, Collin?” Nony rolled another ready stone. “Someone left him chained here, abandoned, and he just given up on life.”

Collin considered suggesting they just push the water closer for the dog. The anxious feeling stopped him by taking form. It became contempt. He looked at the animal, its development lodged somewhere between puppy and full dog, and was sickened to see its shivering and its surrender.

“He can’t help it,” Collin said, but the words rang hateful.

“Bullshit he can’t.” Nony dropped his stones with a dismissive wave. “The moment a bitch start thinking like that, bitch best find a grave.”

They both looked at the dog, horrified and hot with disdain.

“You feel me?” Nony said. “It’s got to be all about getting your own-your cash money-in this world, or a man just be walking dead.”

“I guess.” Collin believed it, though. And maybe it was the hard set of his jaw, but something made Sky lean her braids on his shoulder.

They flew away the next moment as Nony put an open palm to Collin’s forehead and shoved.

“You guess?” Nony said as Collin found his feet again. “What did that feel like?”

“Like you shoving me.”

“Naw, that’s what waking up feels like,” Nony said, glancing hot around the crowd to sear the lesson into them. “Like a motherfucking fact of life.”

“I got enough facts,” Collin growled. It wasn’t the shove that had his anger simmering hotter than the summer’s bite. It was that dog. That damned little dog. He wanted Nony to hit it with another stone.

“What, because your mama all alone, with only you and her rock habit to keep her company?” Nony smirked like a busted gold mine. “Fool, please.”

He shoved Collin’s shoulder. They both smiled, but the voice that called out to them from the Parkway was serious as a backhand.

“You boys starting something?” Reverend Watson said, carefully shutting the door of his ancient Sentra before strolling toward the boys.

Slight as he was in his Salvation Army sweater and stitched jeans, Watson looked vast to Collin. Nony had six inches on the Reverend and still his shoulders withered.

“We ain’t doing nothing, Preach,” Nony muttered. “Fuck off back to your red letters and leave us to the real world.”

Watson shot Nony a glare. “Don’t mouth off to me. You may not have parents that I can get to shake sense into you, but there’s still ways to get to you.”

“What?” Nony talked loud to smother a shudder. “You going to drop a line on me, get the police to search my locker again?”

“My word is a bond, Melvin,” Watson said to Nony. “And I told you-you and Parnell-that I would do whatever it takes to keep you kids from the drugs and violence around here.”

“You done too much for your own good already, always on the phone about us with the police like you is-calling in our stashes and dropping lines on our corner boys right and left. That kind of money, trouble and product lost is a hassle, preacher.” Nony pushed his lips up, shook his head. “You don’t want to be hassling Parnell.”

“I said, whatever it takes.”

“You wouldn’t know what it takes if I read you a book on it,” Nony sniffed.

Watson’s eyes were suddenly around Collin, enveloping and soft. It took some of the poison out of him. None of the intensity, though. Seeing the Reverend only made that boom bigger than ever.

“Are you reading from this boy’s book now, Collin?”

“I give equal time to all folks, sir.” Collin believed it was true after all. The sorry shake of Watson’s head stirred him with disappointment all the same.

“That’s your problem right there then,” Watson said.

Watson walked to the bound dog and released the leash. The animal dove for the water and set to slurping. “You need to listen only to what’s right-to the good way of Jesus.”

Collin bristled. He wanted to do good. But teachings of non-violence and charity only meant learning to accept more and more pain. It meant handouts and hand-me-downs and living in houses too poor to have doors. It meant Mama raiding his bedroom for things to sell, just to parole her mind from the pain of crack withdrawal. It was a life of giving up dreams and settling with nightmares.

What was the good in that?

“I try to follow the Book.”

“Trying isn’t good enough,” Watson insisted. “You have to set aside your daddy’s path-stop chasing the fantasy of slinging dope. There’s no return to that, Collin, just a jail cell or a bullet same as he got.”

“I’m better than my father,” Collin said, and the bristling became electric with need to have that be true.

“There’s no one better than the game, except for those that don’t give up their lives playing it.” Watson opened his hands. They were cracked and tough with use. Their emptiness was loud. “Think of your mama, son.”

At that, Collin’s bristling caught fire. His hands flew up, voice soaring.

“Who you think I’m thinking of, man?” Collin yelled. “Who do you think’s holding my house together, fighting to get her what she needs, while she crying and begging me and pissing in the corners of my goddamn house?”

“Collin.”

“I got all that on me!” Collin took two steps back to keep himself from running at Watson. He would take the man’s hands off; he would pull every tooth from his mouth. Watson was no longer large to Collin-not when Collin’s rage was gigantic. “All of it! On me! At twelve, fool!”

“Collin, you can come to me for help.” Watson was stepping backward for his beater now. “Come by the Missionary Baptist, son.”

“Don’t you fucking ‘son’ me!”

It knocked Watson’s face down. He slid into the car.

“Yeah, that’s straight, dog,” Nony cheered him. Somewhere, Collin sensed, Sky’s eyes were back to broadcasting that terror and expectation.

“You hear?” Collin yelled. “Don’t you ever fucking ‘son’ me! I don’t beg for nothing!”

“That’s right, Collin. That’s right, dog.” Nony bobbed, Collin’s excitement contagious. He looked truly alive, everything about him glowing as if caught in the flashbulb of intensity. Nony laughed as Watson’s car coughed away.

Collin was still seething when Nony’s hand set on his shoulder. He felt terrified, but not the way he did when he woke to Mama rummaging under his bed. It was a fear of what was inside him-of the sheer size of it. Collin feared that it could stomp the entire city down without even trying.

He feared it would be enough to do what he had to.

Nony squeezed his shoulder. “Come on, soldier. Let’s get your real daddy’s package for you.”

For awhile, Sky and Collin just crouched in the overgrown yard. They passed the plastic square of cocaine in the package back and forth, careful as they would their child. Under the tough bend of the bushes, the sweltering sky felt like a shelter around them.

It felt like a shrine. Collin and Sky were shiny with sobriety.

“You scared?” Sky asked. As always, her question sounded soft and unassuming, like a gift left on a doorstep. Collin had to look into the blue eyes that smoldered in her dark face to find the hope reaching for him.

“No,” he lied.

“I’d be scared,” Sky said and then laid her head on his shoulder.

“You got every right,” Collin answered. His hand lifted toward the black artwork of her braids. “This is a scary place-all the fiends and the killers and the liars-and you’re just a little girl.”

“Mhm.” Sky nodded against him, and Collin could feel her relieved smile.

“Your daddy keeps you safe.” And his fingers felt a sigh of their own move through the hardness in them as he touched her hair.

“He didn’t keep my mama safe.”

“No,” Collin said. He recalled Sky saying her father, Parnell, had left her murdered mother behind in Philadelphia. In the Upper Ninth of New Orleans, he built a fortress for his family from ski masks and banana clips and duct tape. His failure to protect Sky’s mother remained in its core and in the core of his daughter’s heart. “I’m keeping my mama safe, though.”

“You going to keep me safe?” The smile withheld itself against Collin’s skin.

“Yes.”

“Forever?”

“Yes,” Collin said, and he hastened to do it-to take the next step. He opened the flap on the plastic and hooked out a small pile of cocaine.

Collin and Sky looked at the white pile. It was so fragile. Fragile and powerful beyond measure. Fatal as a bullet.

He lifted it to his nose.

“You don’t have to,” Sky said, breathless. Collin’s heart was way beyond breath. It was all steam, just boiling, cleansing him of his life before.

“I want to,” Collin said.

“Because my daddy does it?”

Collin looked at the coke. So fragile, so small, and yet the little pile would release him-unlock the cells his teachers’ looks put him in; undo God’s plan; unleash the giant he could be. It would liberate Collin from everything before. Ever after, he could be as big as he wanted.

“Because it’s what men do.”

Collin inhaled. He scooped another bump and took it into his other nostril.

Nothing changed. There was just a subtle numbing in his skull’s center. It made the summer no cooler, the air no lighter. Life seeped on.

Then everything changed. Collin’s heart began to pump sweet electricity.

Everything began to glow with it.

Car tires whispered to a stop on the Parkway as a Pontiac Firebird arrived. Collin’s mind registered each bit of gravel. He could hear Sky’s clothes creasing and settling as she rose. He heard everything, and everything was exact with purpose.

“That’s my daddy,” Sky said. She dipped and put a kiss on Collin’s head. He had never felt something so significant. His skin memorized its poem.

Collin smiled up at her. His smile was matched by the man in the waiting Pontiac Firebird. Parnell nodded at Collin, a priceless look of recognition polished by his thick Buddy Holly glasses.

“Hurry on up now, Sky,” Parnell said, voice like fresh tar on a bad road. “Dinner bell’s ringing, baby girl.”

Sky kept Collin central in her eyes. “You going to see me after you done?”

“For sure,” Collin said and he meant it. The promise was bright and hard, and for the first time, Collin didn’t feel it was made just to be shattered by life in Desire.

He saw Parnell looking at him-glass on his stare hard as Collin’s promise-and felt secure.

“See you after you’re done with my errand, boy,” Parnell said.

Collin grinned. His father had only given demands. His mother only begged. Now he was given purpose.

“Yes, sir.”

Sky left him with a smile. Collin waited until Parnell and she had pulled away before seating the package in his back pocket. He listened to the buzz and throb of the wild yard. Listening put everything-everything in the Desire District-in its place.

Then he rose up with the tether of Sky’s kiss on his brow and went to deliver.

 

The Missionary Baptist Church hallway’s paint was cocaine-white and Collin ran his fingers along it. The texture was spongy and it made the concrete below feel so fragile. His senses soaked up the friction.

Collin turned the corner toward the back offices with his brain a creature of wild appetite, eating up delights from his memory: The taste of his mother’s meatloaf with its too-many onions. The feel of his baby blanket, stitched from old skirts. The way her breath brushed his ear, first teaching him what a poem felt like.

Collin grinned as he made for the second office on the left. He didn’t usually grin when thinking of his mother. It felt good to be able to-to be free to.

Mama taught him other things, after all-she told Collin, “Don’t you be letting this crack demon into you,” before she lit her pipe. Mama told Collin, “You only deserve peace and love in this life, baby,” before tucking him in and waiting only half an hour before opening their front door for the first man of the night. “You my little man, my little king,” Mama would giggle, and then would hide him behind the McDonald’s dumpster before pandering in the parking lot for his Happy Meal.

Collin giggled in memory as he pushed open the office door. Humor kept the darkness at bay. And he could see now-the cocaine let him see-that the world was so very full of light. Everything had a diamond in it if you just looked hard enough.

Even the bad things.

Reverend Watson looked up from his computer as Collin entered, one hand on the package in his back pocket.

“Collin, you came.” Watson’s voice trembled, rich with hope. “You ready to put the demons behind you?”

Collin drew the pistol from his pocket and began squeezing the trigger. He didn’t bother aiming. He left that to the cocaine and walked forward with the bullets.

Collin squeezed until the gun’s slide stuck on empty. With that halt, guilt slammed into Collin like a sledgehammer to his center. His sternum and stomach felt caved in and quaking with fits of sickness. That didn’t matter, though. The cocaine dissolved him into pure light.

“Yeah, Preach,” Collin said to the ripped chunks that remained of Reverend Watson. “I’m done with demons.”

Collin glowed. Tears failed to form, evaporated by the light within him. He turned his eyes from the wreck of the Reverend, up to the wall behind him. Blood speckled there in marvelous blossoms-a gleaming deep red, full of vitality and beauty. It gave Collin an idea.

He felt full of ideas. Ideas and purpose.

 

“They’re for me?” Sky chimed as she gathered the red roses Collin brought her to her chest. Collin stepped toward her, into her house.

“It’s all for you,” Collin said, his smile sure and wide. All his love would be for her and for Mama. No one else mattered. Only his family.

Even with the cocaine’s luster fading, Collin felt his love could shine enough for all of them.

Collin breathed lightly, but the smell of Sky’s den invaded. It was a weave of burning smells-smoke both fresh and from stains on the walls and furniture. There was a clotted quality to the air and to the rich colors of the furnishings, their mahogany and velvet. Collin figured he would have to get used to it.

Places like this were now his home. He figured they always were. Only now, he was brave enough to live in them as a man.

Collin took Sky’s hand, and with the rose thorns writing on his skin and hers, she led him into the kitchen.

Parnell was cooking in there, hunkered at the formica dining table. He tended a lab kit, its burner fluttering below refining crack, that rose from a spill of fast food wrappers. The smile he gave Collin had diamonds in its teeth.

“My little man. You done what I told?”

“You know it, dog,” Collin answered like a soldier.

Parnell nodded. He flung a baggie of crack Collin caught.

“No hard feelings about your old man, then,” Parnell grunted.

“I understand.”

“He had to go down, coming at me like that. Same as Watson did.”

“Yeah,” Collin said, but for the first time since the cocaine, he felt a hollowness that stuck. It sucked at him. He wanted another chance to speak, to prove its void false.

Parnell filled it with his next words. “Welcome to your real family, C-Murder.”

Sky’s lips found Collin’s cheek, and all was light again-light and promises made to be kept.

####

Matthew C. Funk is a social media consultant, professional marketing copywriter and writing mentor. He is an editor of Needle Magazine, editor of the Genre section of the critically acclaimed zine, FictionDaily, and a staff writer for Planet Fury and Spinetingler Magazine. The 2010 Spinetingler Award winner, Best Short Story on the Web, Funk has online work featured at several sites indexed on his Web domain and printed in Needle, Speedloader, PULP INK and D*CKED.