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Clay is in his backyard, early in the morning before the sun comes up. There is no moisture on the ground; the heat of the summer is present even at this hour, and he occasionally swipes at the sweat that beads his forehead. He does his regular routine. He pulls out a new punching bag from the shed in the back and hangs it from the clothesline and he goes to work. When he is done, he jumps rope, then does push ups on the back porch. He sprints from one side of the yard to the other, over and over again until he is breathing with his whole body. When he thinks to break for water, the sun is up and he sees Ivan standing on the low steps of the backdoor smiling with a big bottle of water. Clay smiles and the two meet halfway, in the center of the yard, and they kiss.
“It’s so good to have you here.” Clay says, smiling from ear to ear.
“It’s good to be here,” Ivan kisses Clay’s cheek.
“I’m going to ask you that question soon.” Clay says.
“Not now, Clay. We already talked about this.” Ivan’s smile fades and he turns to go back into the house, but Clay grabs his hand.
“If you know you’ll say yes, then what’s the problem?”
Ivan slowly shakes his head. “I just think we can enjoy this time together. We don’t need to complicate it with anything else.”
Just then, Clay’s sister Brittany calls from the backdoor.
“Clay, come look at the news!”
Inside, Clay stares, incensed, at the news on TV. It is a local broadcast and Clay recognizes the street in front of his house, the sidewalk where he had his first conflict with the drug dealer/purveyor of prostitution and he had bloodied the man’s nose with very little effort.
“Jamar Smith was released earlier today, acquitted of charges of human trafficking. It was at this house that police found women and girls as young as fifteen who alleged that Smith and his associates kept the women as slaves for years and forced them to perform sex acts with customers. Victims also alleged that drugs were sold in the house. Smith, just twenty seven years old, was tried at the federal court in Charlotte, NC. Smith’s release has caused controversy nationwide and has drawn the condemnation of many human rights organizations who say that the preponderance of evidence against Smith should have led to an easy conviction for federal prosecutors. But Smith’s lawyer was able to convince the jury otherwise.”
Clay is breathing heavily by the end of the report. His nostrils are flared and when he draws air into them, there is an audible sound. His shoulders rise and fall. Ivan notices and grabs his face.
“He’s the one that killed me.” Clay says, and his voice is a low rumble that unsettles his sister.
“What?” Brittany asks.
“Before he came to TN to see me,” Ivan explains, “he was shot, in the backyard. But I thought it was a woman, Clay?” Ivan nods then says to Brittany, “He thinks they’re a gang or something.”
“Jamar shot you!” Brittany says surprised. Even though Clay didn’t know Jamar, his sister had known him her whole life. They had gone to school together and in their youth, he would tease and bully her, and as they got older he would apologize for his childish ways and swear to one day make her his wife. But Brittany knew that Jamar had no respect for women and she resisted his charms and largely ignored him. She never let him close to her, he probably had no idea that she even had a brother.
“I can’t believe that sick son of a bitch. I knew he was a criminal, I just always thought it was drugs.” Brittany looks to Clay and she squints her eyes like they are playing tricks on her. It seems that Clay is bigger somehow, but she figures that the shock of such a story in her own backyard was causing her stress that made her vision weird.
Ivan is holding Clay’s face and trying to calm his anger and Brittany swears that she sees Clay come to his regular size, but she blinks it away. She likes the smile on her brother’s face after he has calmed down and he looks into Ivan’s eyes. She takes a step closer to them, there is a strange feeling in the room. It is pleasant, but indescribable and she can’t help but smile with them. Until she remembers the words that Clay had said before. That Jamar had killed him.
“You were by yourself when they shot you?” Brittany asks.
Clay looks at Brittany confused.
“You said they killed you?” Brittany asks.
Clay struggles to respond, so Ivan does it for him. “The ambulance got to him just in time.”
Brittany nods slowly. It was becoming apparent to her that despite the bond she shared with her brother, who she has lived with her entire life, he is still very much a mystery to her. There are so many things about him that she does not know.
“We have to talk.” Clay says gravely and Ivan notices a flint of green in his eyes.
When Clay leaves for work, Ivan sits with Brittany in the kitchen while she sips from a glass of orange juice.
“I think you make my brother happy.” She says. “I realize that I don’t even know if he was happy before. All we ever really talk about is money and bills. Neither of us really dated, and when I did, I never brought anybody home. I don’t know why. It’s not like Clay would have a problem, and I wouldn’t have either, but I know that I never met anybody that I wanted in my daddy’s house. He’s not a perfect man, but he loves us. The rest of our brothers and sisters don’t care about that anymore, but me and Clay do, and we take care of this house because we love him. The fact that he brought you here to live with him, that just blows my mind. You make him really happy. You seem closer to him than I ever was.”
Brittany isn’t bitter, she is genuinely grateful for Ivan. Ivan can sense that she worried that Clay would work himself to death to keep his father’s house and never go out into the world and make a life of his own.
“Your brother loves you,” Ivan says. “You’re the only family that he has really and he knows that.”
Brittany nods. “Sometimes I feel like his mama. Sometimes he feels like my daddy. But, I don’t know. He seems so different. He was only gone a couple days and, I guess he’s doing everything for real now. I guess he was just faking his smile before.”
“You really think he’s different?” Ivan asks. The thought worries him; it’s why he hesitated to take the next step in their relationship. Ivan knows that before they met, Clay had never had problems controlling himself, and now it seems that if Ivan isn’t close by, he could ransack an entire neighborhood if he was triggered.
Brittany senses his worry. “It’s not a bad thing. He’s not worse off now than he was before.”
Ivan nods, hoping that she’s right.
When Clay left the house for work, he didn’t go directly to his car. Instead, he crossed the street to the house of the drug dealer/purveyor of prostitution. He stood at the door on the welcome mat that made the house fit in with the other houses in the neighborhood in the daytime, when it looked just like every other house from the outside. He rang the doorbell, and when the door opened, a woman answered.
“We ain’t answering questions, stop knocking on our damn door…” she started, but she stopped when she saw Clay. He smiled at her and waved. She had a blank look on her face, like she was shocked at the sight of a ghost.
“I just wanted you to know that I ain’t dead. You can tell your friend, Jamar, that I’m coming for him. I’m coming for all of you.” Clay’s voice rumbles and the woman backs into the house, away from the door.
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