His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas Read online

  There’s no reason for him to react like this to her. No reason he should stand in the street, not caring that he’s surrounded by gang bangers who could turn on him at any second.

  She’s…not beautiful. A black girl can’t be beautiful. He wasn’t raised to think like that.

  But she is mesmerizing. So mesmerizing, it feels like it’s just him and her standing out here in this roach-infested cul-de-sac. And for some reason, his dick—which is supposed to be deaf, dumb, and blind to her kind—is thrumming like an engine revving inside his pants.

  Mason doesn’t understand. Cannot reconcile it. This girl ain’t white. She ain’t even one of them darkie spics who won’t let you call them black, far as he can tell.

  So why can’t he stop looking at her—?

  He’s released from her spell abruptly. Because suddenly Razo’s standing between them, grabbing her by the throat. “What I tell you about him and that fucking soccer ball, huh, puta? What I say you about staying out the way when I’m working?”

  It’s not exactly fair. Mason prefers to keep his business meetings on par with the most fucked up of cable guys. He provides a vague window of days during which he might stop in with the goods, and usually shows up around dinner time on the first day when he knows they’ll least expect him. Ain’t no way this woman or that boy had any way of knowing who he was, or why he was here, when they left the house.

  But the girl doesn’t try to argue with Razo or make excuses. Her body just stiffens, her eyes rolling to the side of her face that’s the farthest from Razo, in a way Mason recognizes more than he cares to admit. June knows she’s about to get hit but doesn’t want to see it coming.

  And she’s right.

  Razo gives her a short, vicious punch. He’s obviously had a lot of practice. It’s just enough to deliver a painful blow without damaging her face. The woman’s head lulls, but she doesn’t throw up her hands, doesn’t try to protect herself. It’s as if she’s flipped on a zombie switch. Figured out a way to disappear while her boyfriend’s doing this to her. At least Mason assumes Razo’s her boyfriend.

  June’s lack of fight seems to diffuse the tension and stop Razo from hitting her again. Instead, he shoves her, sending her stumbling backwards onto her butt. “Get back to the house, bitch,” he spits at her. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  Get back to the house. Familiar language you’d only use with someone you were intimate with. Definitely Razo’s girlfriend, Mason thinks. His to command. His to hit. His to do with as he pleases.

  But for some reason, Razo’s command to go back to the house brings the girl out of zombie mode. She starts pointing toward something at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  “You think I’m gonna let you take the bus to go see that fag now?” Razo answers, voice nearly screeching with anger. “After this!? You out your mind, puta!”

  He grabs her by the arm, yanking her to feet—but not out of any sense of chivalry. No, this assist is only given so he can really get up in her face. Bare his teeth at her as he….

  Mason doesn’t see it coming. If he had, he would have turned away. But the next thing he knows, he’s watching Razo push the orange end of his cigarette into the woman’s chest, pressing so hard, it collapses like a small, white accordion against her dark skin.

  Again she doesn’t make a sound. There’s only a grimace, quick as a flash, like her face has become a valve for releasing pain in silence.

  But for Mason, it’s too late. His heart stops, seizing up as his brain’s engine reverses hard into memory.

  It’s an old, old male Fairgood tradition, dating back almost to when Winstons first hit the shelves back in the fifties. Fairgood men put their cigarettes out on their boys. It wasn’t considered cruel. It was training. Training the boys up to be men who knew how to endure, so they wouldn’t become too soft, so they could handle pain…

  “Now get in the house like I told you!” Razo calls out in the distance.

  But in Mason’s mind, his father, Fred Fairgood, is telling him to get back to his room, while he “deals” with Mason’s mother.

  She said something wrong again.

  Did something wrong.

  Maybe asked the wrong question.

  Or looked at Fred the wrong way.

  Got too fucked up on the drugs Fred plied her with.

  There are a million things that could set his parents off. So many, it’s almost not a surprise when a hot cigarette burns against the back of Mason’s neck and he’s told to go, now.

  And Mason does, just like that half-darkie boy. Wanting to stay, but knowing from experience he’d only make it worse. That any action or word he could possibly think of would prolong his mother’s suffering rather than end it.

  He goes, but the fighting follows him down the hallway. The sound of his father’s low menacing voice growling at his mother. And, depending on how high she is, his mother shrieking right on back at him, telling him he’s washed up, that both him and his brother are disappointments to the SFK board. That he’s lucky to have her. How she knows he’s sleeping with [insert name of latest SFK groupie here]. How if it wasn’t for Mason, she’d have left his ass the first time he laid hands on her. How he’d better not ever sleep too deep, because one night she’d cut his dick off—

  And so it goes, a verbal release before the beating. The more creative his mother gets, the longer she staves off the inevitable. His father almost seems to enjoy listening to her. To Mason, her shrill voice sounds like the equivalent of squeezing hard on the throttle. Of someone getting a motorcycle nice and angry, so it’d make the biggest amount of noise as it speeds down the road.

  By the time Mason reached the soccer ball kid’s age, he’d learned to climb out his bedroom window during this part. To be anywhere but there while his mother was still shrieking.

  But when he was little…

  When he was little, all he could do was cower behind the bedroom door. Listen to the shrill screams and the low-pitched yells until the noise of the beating ended all the talk.

  Then it was just the hard, dull slaps of fists raining down on skin. The kind of sound that doesn’t remotely resemble what you hear on TV or in movies. This would go on for a surprisingly short time. Five…ten minutes, tops. Then the aftermath. The weird quiet after the beating. Also not what you see on TV. In real life, there ain’t no sobbing after your father’s done beating on your mother. Not if he’s done it right. Not if he’s a Fairgood. After a Fairgood beatdown, the only sound anybody’s going to hear is him…his breath, panting from the exertion of putting his old lady in her place. The soundtrack of him standing over her, waiting to see if she dares get up. Or say so much as another word.

  And then he stops breathing hard. And there’s nothing left but the quiet. And if you’re a Fairgood boy who hasn’t learned to climb out the window yet, you just have to wait and see what happens next. Because maybe your father will leave out, go have a few more drinks at the clubhouse. Maybe he’ll head to his room and pass out from drink the way your mom has passed out from her beating. Or maybe he’ll come after you. Finish releasing the rest of his anger, finish what the cigarette burn started—

  When Mason returns to reality, everything has changed. The woman is gone. And Razo and his original three-guy crew are in front of him. Exchanging unsettled looks with each other in a silent conversation Mason can easily translate as, What the fuck is up with this loco gringo?

  Bad things happen when he’s triggered. Most often people get hurt. Sometimes they get dead. Are they looking at him that way because he snapped?

  But no…he looks around the cul-de-sac. No blood, no dead bodies, and the porches are empty now—but in a smart, disappearing act way, not in an aftermath sort of way. He knows aftermath. Really well. And this ain’t it.

  Mason lets himself breathe again, somehow knowing she’s inside one of those graffiti-covered houses. Maybe the same one as the boy. Safe. At least for now.

  “Hey, you alright, man?”

&nb
sp; His eyes flicker back to the cholos.

  “You was just standing there,” Razo tells him. “Breathing real weird. Like you fixing to explode or something.”

  The other three snicker at their boss’s observation.

  Only to stop short when Mason hits them with a look. The one he usually saves for right before he pulls out the bowie knife his uncle, D’s dad, gave him for his twelfth birthday. “You can use it on any animal gives you trouble. Don’t matter if it’s on four legs or two.”

  At Mason’s look, Razo actually shrinks back, but then manages to regain his poise and find some courage inside his small chest. “We doing this or what?” he asks, lowering his voice a few octaves and tapping both hands against his HIJOS DE LA MUERTES tattoo.

  Mason blinks, a deliberate motion that serves to reset his face into business mode.

  Yeah, crazy shit happens when he’s triggered. Take, for example, right now when he opens his mouth and unleashes words. Three of them, directed at Razo. “That your girl?”

  Razo’s brow furrows, his confusion at Mason’s unexpected question written clearly across his face. “Yeah, and don’t worry, homes. I’m going to make her pay for what happened with your bike. As soon as we get our fifteen extra, you know.”

  It’s both a promise and a threat. The original request for fifteen extra guns hangs over the conversation like a storm cloud, warning of shit to come.

  But Mason ignores the cloud and asks, “You sick of fucking her yet?”

  A thoughtful beat. Then as if just now realizing it himself, Razo answers, “Gettin’ there. I mean she fine, but that kid and—”

  Razo cuts off, the obvious question suddenly occurring to him, “Hey, why you askin’ about her?”

  Crazy, crazy, shit, Mason thinks. But he asks the next question anyway.

  “How much you want for her?”

  Chapter 2

  Twenty glocks. His custom bike. And five thousand dollars.

  That’s what Mason pays for Razo’s girl. A fucking black girl. And one who comes as a package deal, no less.

  “You take her kid, too,” Razo demanded during the negotiations. “No way he staying here with us. Ain’t good for shit. Can’t even trust him on runs cuz he talk too much.”

  Well, fuck…

  So that’s how Mason ends up jammed in the front of his van with a silent black woman and her kid…one she maybe had with Razo. She sits as far from him as possible, slumped against the passenger side door so heavily, he’s half afraid she’s going to accidentally depress the handle and roll out into the oncoming traffic of the 303-N.

  Sure, it would solve the current situation. But it’d be messy. And create a whole bunch of other problems he really doesn’t need right now.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck…

  Mason drives, trying to ignore the kid seated between him and the woman. The boy clutches that goddamn soccer ball in his lap like it’s a beloved pet. And he’s been yammering since they peeled out of the cul-de-sac. Forty-five long-as-hell minutes and barely a pause to breathe.

  Turns out, the kid only needs someone with a pulse to keep a conversation going. And apparently, he was born completely without the ability to read a fucking room. Because despite Mason’s aggressive lack of response and his mom’s leaden silence, the boy jabbers all the way to Beaver Lake. About Arkansas’s lack of a major league soccer team. About the last World Cup. About that one time he kicked his soccer ball all the way over the house. About that other time he kicked his soccer ball down an open manhole and a worker from the city’s water and power department had to get it for him.

  The kid’s one-sided conversation definitely has a running theme, and it doesn’t occur to him to ask a single non-soccer related question until Mason pulls up in front of a lodge with a burnt out neon “Vacancy” sign.

  Even then, the boy’s voice sounds more curious than afraid when he asks, “Where we at?” He doesn’t even seem the slightest bit worried that Mason has driven him and his mom to a very remote area of Beaver Lake. With backwoods so dense, you can barely make out the sky above.

  “Motel,” Mason grunts back, even though that’s not exactly true. More like a bunch of run-down cabins and a few campsites. Not the ritziest place on the lake, but one that—for obvious reasons—always has vacancies. Also its owner accepts cold hard cash and doesn’t require signatures or paperwork.

  “You looking for a room, son?”

  Speaking of the owner…

  An old man, about the same age as Methuselah, charges out of the lodge towards them. His question might have come off as hospitable if not for the Model 60 Marlin Rimfire in his hands, barrel pointed directly at the van.

  “Relax, Burt. It’s me.” Mason says, rolling down the driver’s side window.

  “Oh…hey, Fairgood!” Burt lowers his gun with a cackle, recognizing Mason as that guy who’s been coming here once or twice a year for the last five. “Haven’t seen you in a while! Didn’t recognize you in that vehicle.” The old man narrows his eyes, peering further into the dark recesses of the cab. “I see you brought some friends…”

  Burt knows who Mason is. What Mason is. He’s seen the patches on Mason’s vest, and once, Burt even came by to warn him he had some colored folks staying in one of his cabins. “I ain’t lookin for no race war on my property, so if it’s going to be a problem…”

  It hadn’t been a problem. Mason knew how to keep to himself, and ignore the fact that the rest of the world isn’t as lily white as the one at the SFK compound.

  But tonight, with the barely functioning neon motel sign flickering in the background, there’s just enough light to illuminate the interior of the van. Burt squints and strains to get a better look. Obviously trying to figure out if he’s seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. “You…ah…looking for more than one campsite today?”

  Mason pushes a wad of cash at the old man through the van window. “I’ll take one of the king kitchenette cabins. Going to be here for…a few weeks.”

  Burt’s watery eyes light up at the bills. There’s way more in that bundle than what the cabin’s worth, even at the weekly rate.

  The old guy reaches over and takes the money. “3C, last on the left. It’s all yours,” he says without looking up from counting his cash.

  Mason leaves him to it.

  “How old was that guy?” the kid asks as they drive away. “A hundred?”

  Mason glances over at the silent woman, still pressed up against the passenger door. Her hands are folded primly in her lap, making her look like a Catholic school girl in chola clothes.

  She still hasn’t said a word. Hasn’t so much as looked in his direction since Razo’s guys shoved her at him after the exchange of glocks, money, and Mason’s bike.

  The kid and her had climbed into his van with nothing but a backpack between them. And now she’s shrunk up against the passenger door in a way that makes Mason wonder if she’s permanently flipped on her zombie switch.

  “Stay here,” he growls at her and the kid. The van is a stick, which he knows most women can’t drive. But just in case, Mason yanks the key out of the ignition. Sure, she can still escape on foot, but at least now he can give chase if she tries.

  Hold up. Why the fuck is he planning how to catch her if she runs? Why in the hell is he figuring out how he’ll track down the woman he had no business buying in the first place? If he had any goddamn sense, Mason would be praying for her to haul ass. And take the kid with her, save him the trouble.

  But he sends up no prayers, and not just because he’s been a secret non-believer since his mother died the way she did. No, it’s mostly because of the woman. Because despite her not wanting to be anywhere near him, he gets hard at the thought of her.

  And though he knows he can’t keep her for long, his head is filled with thoughts that someone like him should definitely not be having about someone like her. Mason wonders about the body under her tacky clothes. Wonders if it feels as soft as it looks. Imagines her thick thighs wrapped
around his waist as he—

  Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  He shakes his head and tries to clear it of those unwelcome thoughts, all while striding towards 3C. If it wasn’t already clear that his cousin’s disappearance is fucking with his head, it’s sure as shit clear now.

  The cabin door turns out to be sticky, so Mason kicks the damn thing open with a heavy motorcycle boot. But this relatively small release of anger does nothing to reduce his pent up frustration. As he turns on every single light in the cabin, and opens every single window not already welded shut, he reflexively and repeatedly pulls on an invisible gun trigger. He wishes he’d killed every one of those cholo motherfuckers. Wishes he’d never met this woman…even as he swears if she so much as thinks about leaving, he’ll hunt her down like a dog.

  Mason shakes his head again. He’s all messed up. His mind is a jumble of thoughts about hunting, and gun running. About fucking the black girl waiting for him in the van.

  He won’t stay at the cabin tonight. But for June’s sake, he performs a final sweep of the room. Opens the stove, the fridge, and kicks the bed to scare out anything lurking beneath.

  Truth is, Burt isn’t exactly known for his high quality housekeeping standards. Last time he stopped in, Mason witnessed a whole family of raccoons crawl out through a partially open cabin window.

  But this time, there are no signs of animal life inside. Mason’s about to fetch his two passengers, when the kid appears behind him in the doorway.

  “Whoa!” he says, looking around the cabin.

  “I thought I told you to stay in the van!” Mason barks, irritation pounding in his head worse than a headache.

  But the boy only walks further in, not remotely intimidated, his eyes wide as saucers. “Double beds? A fridge?! Ah, man, we even got a stove!” Looking like he’s just been shown into a room at a luxury hotel, the boy rushes to the old gas stove. “June! Come see!”

  June…

  She stands in the doorway.

  And Mason’s stomach revs up at the sight of her, on cue. He realizes he’s staring. Unable to look away.