City of Beads

They had smoked sausage and hamburgers fired up on the grill and an ice chest full of Old Milwaukee beer and Cokes. Their aunt was inside making her gumbo, soupy green and full of chicken, sausage, garlic, okra, and onions. It smelled so rich and fine that the old men in the neighborhood were starting to pass by to say hello. Their sister Tania, whose house this was, had a half-gallon bottle of Canadian Club and some ice in the living room for anybody who dropped in.

“Hurry up, Auntie,” Kip called. “We’re dying of hunger.”

“Don’t rush me,” came a deep voice from inside. “It takes a long time to make things just right.”

“You better get you one of these before they’re all gone.” Kip waved his beer can at his younger brother.

“Naw, you can do all the drinking for me,” Thomas said. He was in training and so high on the possibilities stretching out before him that Kip, his beer, and even Kip’s shiny Cadillac taxi parked by the curb held no temptations at all.

Kip drove a cab for a living. That was his story, and that’s what Thomas believed.

It was halftime. All the guests were inside sampling the gumbo and mixing drinks from the big bottle. Tania poured some potato chips into a plastic bowl to carry outside to her brothers.

A nothing-special sky-blue car, maybe an old Ford Galaxie, drove slowly past the house. Kip looked toward it, then jerked around to look at his brother.

“Thomas!” he yelled.

Anything else he planned to say got lost in the noise of an automatic pistol firing. Errant lead pellets broke the front windows of the house and sent the old men and women jumping for the floor, splashing gumbo and sweet cocktails over the walls and each other. But several found their target and perforated Kip’s chest and face, knocking him backward onto the porch and into his sister’s arms. She threw the potato chips into the front yard and fell on top of him. Thomas took a bullet in the knee.

The nothing-special car didn’t even speed up. It just made the corner and rolled on.