Grief and Gold Teeth
Manman sends me the address to a chapel by the railroad tracks, and he’s sipping a double cup in the parking lot when I pull up, so I throw fifty on the bottle, post up by his brother against a tailgate, and send my first pour to the ground. They say their cousin didn’t drink like that, but it’s all right. He was only twenty-two. Manman freaks a Black and Mild, dumping cigar guts into the wrapper. His brother laughs quietly to himself, then goes on about the time their cousin set a bug bomb off in his Buick, how the label said to let it clear for at least two hours, how those directions are meant for a house and not a hatchback, how when he went to driving he got to swerving too, and how their auntie found him passed out by the overpass, laid up in the driver’s seat like a roach on its back. I ask if that’s how their cousin got his nickname, and I take a long sip. Manman and his brother look at me like I must be feeling that drink already, and they ask if I’ve been paying attention, if I’m really supposed to be some kind of writing teacher, if I realize the man lived damn near his whole life before the events of that story came to pass. Heavy bass hits in a nearby trunk, and my blood jumps like a spooked rooster. Manman pins the cigar behind his ear and asks if I’m ready to see the man in the box. They killed him, he tells the concrete. They killed him just on the other side of those tracks. And there’s nothing else to say about it. I ask if they know who did it. His brother spits and licks his golds. I take another long sip. Then I hope out loud that they’re not planning anything. Manman asks what I mean by anything. His brother says it won’t be him. Manman says it won’t be him either. But neither can speak for the Hennessy. The building hosts several simultaneous services. A woman weeps at the chapel doors. Another young man smiles from the front of her t-shirt. I tell them I’m ready to go in whenever they’re ready to go in. Manman tells me to chill, and he sparks his cigar. His brother pours another drink. We’re about to go in, they tell me. We’re about to go in real soon.
