Dallas kept what would be his final vigil at the warm storefront window, watching cars and kids roast in the Carolina sun. The crowd next door at Bryant's Cold Drinks and Snacks wouldn't thin out for another forty-five minutes at least. Minivans, buses and station wagons swam lazily through the scorching fumes of Loomis Street towards the school. Even though the glass was tinted, his blue eyes watered over, so Dallas turned back into the little air conditioned lobby and looked at the television. My Little Pony commercials didn't interest him much, so he took yet another look at Tina's artwork. All over the walls were dragons, snakes, eagles, wolves- anything predatory and the article from Body Art that featured Tina as the winner of some contest in Georgia. She had a huge smile cut across her pale face and her lips were the same pink as the streaks in her bleached hair. One lace- gloved hand underlined a snake ripping its way out of a guy's shoulderblade.
A bang from the back of the shop turned the boy's attention to Tina herself. She was spinning around in the single chair behind the counter, popping her gum.
"Did you see that?" she asked. "It was huge." The picture of her was almost a year old, but she looked the same now. She'd told him once that Cyndi Lauper had seen her in Georgia and was copying her. "I knew you should've gotten 'em at two! GOD!!!" She pouted dramatically and spun the chair again.
"Why don't you just go get 'em?"
"'Cause I'd come back and your arm would look like ground beef. Besides, if I'm gonna harbor a criminal, he's gonna go get my CIGARETTES."
"I could be a customer," he said slyly.
"Oh, sorry. Call back when you're eighteen." That was what she always said. She spun again.
Tina was so much... COOLER than the girls at the junior high. Those girls ran in cliques and only talked to boys who did the same. Dallas hadn't been around at the right time or something when the cliques had formed, so he wound up by himself during recess (called "break" now) and lunch. Tired of sitting and listening, sitting and reading, sitting and eating, not touching, not talking and having no friends, he had decided to find something more stimulating to do with his day than go to school.
He'd needed place to hide out, though. A lone thirteen year old redhead didn't exactly disappear in the entirely black community around the junior high. Mr. Bryant didn't care if he was skipping school, but Dallas couldn't hang out in the store all day, even if he WOULD run errands. Taking the man's advice to "talk to that white girl that just moved in next door," Dallas had stammered out his proposal to the most exotic beauty he'd ever seen. She'd laughed at him. She'd stared at him with her mouth hanging open for a moment. Finally, she had shrugged and said that, frankly, she could use the company until business picked up; and she'd hated school, too.
"You okay? You spaced out for a minute."
"Yeah." Dallas flopped down on the lobby sofa. Tina got up and walked through the door in the back, into her apartment.
He was thinking he could go for some of that cereal being advertised when the front door opened. A lean, rat- faced man in a Def Leppard T-shirt and blue jeans came in, along with a heat wave that reeked of asphault. His blond hair hung limp down to his shoulders and his arms were covered in blue and red tattoos.
"Tina Baby," he said calmly, looking toward the back of the shop.
Tina's head popped out of the back door. "Hey, Butterfly! I'll just be a minute!"
Dallas wondered who this guy was and why anyone would be named "Butterfly."
"Hey, big 'un," the man said. "You know why they call me Butterfly?"
Dallas shook his head. There was a sudden flurry of movement and a knife appeared in the man's hand.
"'Cause I live by the blade that bears my name!"
Dallas' eyebrows pinched. The television announced that Masters of the Universe was coming back on. Butterfly turned.
"Aw, shit! He-Man!" A couple of flashy wrist moves and the knife was back in the man's pocket. He stood next to the sofa. "There's another man who lives by his blade."
"Yeah," Dallas said. "But they don't call him the Sword of Grayskull."
"You think you funny?" Butterfly's hand flinched toward his knife pocket.
"I didn't expect to see you today," Tina said, emerging from the back.
Butterfly turned his attention to her. "Well, this must be your lucky day."
Tina giggled. Dallas liked her giggle, but he didn't like her giggling for this guy. Butterfly obviously had a screw loose. How could she be so nice to him? Tina ushered him into her apartment and shut the door most of the way, leaving Dallas to his cartoons.
He suddenly felt out of place. Like he should be back in school. Like he should not be in the adults' way. But he couldn't leave yet. He had Tina's money, no cigarettes and the after-school crowd was still outside. He settled in to Masters of the Universe.
* * * *
"How you doin', young man?" Mr. Bryant leaned over the counter. His dark brown face wrinkled open into a toothy grin.
"Fine, Mr. Bryant," Dallas said. The store was dimly lit by the drink coolers in the back and the two strips of fluorescents running up to the counter. The concrete floor was pockmarked and hadn't been mopped in years. It was an old shop, with an old operation. Mr. Bryant had opened his doors when the junior high was the high school for just the black kids back in the fifties. The crowd had changed, (and so had the stock, despite rumors to the contrary floating around the cliques) but nothing else had.
Dallas put the six quarters on the counter and Mr. Bryant slid the Camels to him. Dallas quickly put them in his pocket. Even though they were for Tina, the aging shopkeeper wouldn't sell the cigarettes to Dallas until all other eyes were away. "Legalities," he called it.
"Dallas Conroy!" someone shouted. Big Mike Sherwood, the biggest, roundest redneck in the seventh grade, stood in the doorway, letting the cool air blow out of the store and onto him. Mike had decided to throw Dallas in the school dumpster once last year, but otherwise never bothered him.
"How's it hangin', old man?" Mike asked.
"It's hanging open. Come in or shut the door."
"I been lookin' for you, Copper- Top!" Mike let the door shut.
"Stay in here, young man."
"I ain't scared a' that boy," Dallas said. That was true enough, but he still hoped he could put Big Mike off long enough to get to Tina's and not end up in another trash can.. He marched into the baking heat and headed next door. Mike spun him around by the shoulder and towered over him. His spiked hair made him look like a dandelion, Dallas thought.
"Don't you fuckin' walk off from me! Gimme yer money!"
"I don't have any," Dallas said evenly, gauging the distance to the door.
"Then gimme what you bought, Punk Ass!" Dallas turned away again, making for the door. Mike kicked him in the back. He landed on his chest, losing his breath. The sidewalk burned his hands and face. He felt himself get hauled up and slammed against the wall. Big Mike braced one arm against Dallas' throat and fished through his pockets with the other. He pulled out the cigarettes and dropped the choking redhead.
"You think you cool 'cause you smoke?" he asked, opening the pack.
"Those ain't mine. Or yours." Dallas took a lungful of hot, thick air.
"Oh yeah?" Mike put one in his mouth. "'Ey b'long ta 'at bitch?"
Dallas blanched. "What?"
"I heard she fucks you so you'll get her cigarettes."
"You ain't heard that. Give 'em back." Dallas held out his hand. Mike scowled and slapped it down. Dallas brought up his other hand just then and socked the bully in the jaw, knocking the cigarette out of his mouth. He swung again and again, both times. Big Mike backed up a step and punched Dallas hard in the face, crumpling him against the wall.
Mr. Bryant appeared, grabbed Mike and tossed him in the street saying "Git on outta heuh!" Mike got up and ran away laughing.
"Come on, honey, can you stand up?" Tina's voice. Dallas jumped up and looked at her.
"I'm fine, " he said. His vision watered over, so he wiped his eyes and nose and looked down at his hands. He was bleeding. He kept his face down and looked for the cigarettes.
"He got yo' smokes," Mr. Bryant said.
"If you had a blade, that wouldn't have happened," Butterfly said.
Tina told him to shut up. "C'mon, Dallas." She opened her door and Dallas walked in, still keeping his face down. In the air conditioning, it was easier to breathe, but his chest and back ached, his hands stung and his head felt like it was full of cotton.
He walked back to the bathroom and locked himself in to cry out his embarrassment and stop the bleeding from his cheek and lip. He hoped Big Mike's face looked just as bad.
When he finally came out of the bathroom, Tina was sitting on her stool next to the padded vynil tattoo chair and Butterfly was gone. She directed Dallas into the seat.
"Let me see," she said. Her hand softly touched his chin and she began an intense inspection. He wanted her to bring those sparkling green eyes up to his just then. "Your lip will be fine, keep licking it." She opened a bottle of alcohol and the fumes caused Dallas' face to sting.
"Won't that hurt?"
"You've been through worse," she smiled. Dallas squeezed the arms of the chair as she dabbed his face with a soaked cottonball. "Mr. Bryant told me what that boy said. He heard the whole thing."
"Then why didn't he help me sooner?" Dallas asked between grunts. Tina was quiet for a moment.
"Thank you for defending my honor, Dallas." She looked him right in the eye and smiled at him.
Dallas blushed, which made his cuts bleed a little. "I wasn't very good at it," he said, smiling back. She leaned in slowly and delicately and kissed him on his unbruised cheek.
"Nobody's ever stood up for me like that before. It was nice. I mean, I'm sorry there were injuries, but... you're brave, Dallas."
The sincerity in those heavily mascaraed eyes with the electric blue lids put a picture in Dallas' mind that would never leave him. This was the face of Heaven. He loved her, he thought. And he decided to tell her so immediately- but she interrupted him.
"When's your birthday?"
Dallas blinked. "Umm, November twentieth."
"Well, it's May, close enough. You want your tattoo?"
Dallas gasped. "Yeah! Of what?"
"Do you trust me?" He thought for a moment that he should approve the design, but, truthfully, he just wanted a tattoo.
"Yes," he said. The television in the lobby began the theme song for The Transformers, Dallas' favorite show.
"Uh- oh," Tina said, watching him.
"I don't care about that, gimme a tattoo!" he smiled. Tina giggled- for him this time, and told him to switch seats with her.
"We'll have to make it small. Somewhere that stays covered normally."
"Shoulder blade," Dallas said, thinking of the article from Body Art.
"What about when you go swimming?"
"I burn easy, I always wear a shirt."
"Great!" she said. "Gimme your back."
Dallas balked. Be half naked in front of Tina? That was... not all bad... He turned away from her.
Normally, when he took his shirt off, he pulled his arms inside and scooted it up over his head. That struck him now as childish. Imitating a commercial he'd seen, he crossed his arms downward, grabbed the hem of his plain red T-shirt and pulled it up over his head, arching his back a little to the left. Yeah, definitely a more masculine way to disrobe, he thought. Suddenly, goosebumps appeared all over his body and his nipples got hard. His body tightened from neck to crotch down the front and he loved it. He put his hands in his armpits to cover his nipples and sat down on the stool.
"Okay," Tina said over his shoulder. "You know the deal." She dried the sanitizing solution off the needle. "Keep talking and don't pass out."
Dallas not only didn't pass out, after the initial shock of how much it hurt, he actually enjoyed it. Maybe his body was mostly numb to pain after his fight with Big Mike Sherwood. He didn't know, but when he walked out of Tina's twenty minutes later, he felt ... alive. Individualized. Proud. Like he had done something that few people ever did. Even if the kids at school never spoke to him again, he didn't care. He didn't need them to make him feel like somebody. He WAS somebody. Somebody interesting. Somebody important. He knew that with more certainty than anything he'd ever learned in a classroom. And he loved it.
His tattoo was a small, simple red heart. Tina told him it was the symbol of courage. He thought that it was the symbol of love, too, but he hadn't said so. He still wanted to tell Tina that he loved her, but he wanted to say it right. Maybe later, when she added the dagger through the heart. It was too plain now, she had said. But he couldn't imagine anything cooler.
His shoulder was tender and Mama would question him about his face. He had decided to say that he slid into second head- first. That should satisfy her and explain the soreness. He wouldn't even get busted for the fight, much less skipping school.for the last two weeks. The Assistant Principals couldn't call her at work because they didn't know that she'd just started a new job at an insurance agency. Calling her at home after six would require some administrator to take their work home with them and, well, that just didn't happen. Dallas wondered if he'd ever go to school again.
"Perfect," he said to himself as he began his thirty- minute trek home. Through the black neighborhoods, across the heavily travelled Lancaster Street and into the white neighborhoods, Dallas paraded. People were out in their yards, playing basketball, washing cars, grilling hamburgers or clustered in driveways or on porches; and they noticed him. Their conversations would die down as he passed and pick back up behind him, which was fine. It meant they were talking about him. He kept his head up, letting them all see his injuries. Walking home this late, he imagined they would think he'd been in detention for fighting. That he was trouble. He liked that.
* * * *
"Git your ass outta that tree!" Mama was looking up the sweetgum tree at him. He could see for miles around- maybe all of Chester County from his perch and he thought Mama looked very small down there, even in her heels. She was waiting for him with a verbal slap, but as he gingerly made his way down, she saw his face and became decidedly less angry.
"What happened, hon?"
He gave the prepared response. She walked him inside for hot dogs.
After supper, he wanted to go for a walk. Mama looked at him sideways, looked outside, then said: "Don't go too far. And be home before dark."
He walked out of the house and up the street calmly. As soon as he was out of sight of home, he ran.
He ran past people riding lawnmowers and men hunched under truck hoods. He ran past brick houses, through unfenced yards and across Lancaster Street. He ran past a group of old men drinking from paper bags, past a gathering of teenagers washing their cars and listening to rap music on boom boxes, past wooden houses that should have fallen in years ago, to Loomis Street, where he collapsed at the stop sign. He was out of breath and drooling, but there, just up the street, was Tina's.
He'd spent his afternoon in the tree deciding that his life was a new toy. Something he owned. It was a fully poseable action figure and he could do anything he wanted to with it. He would no longer sit and listen and not touch and not talk and watch television and watch other kids have fun and watch them go home and just... watch the world spin by with no say in what happened. He was here, too. He would touch and talk and fight and... do. He would no longer sit looking at Tina and thinking of what it would be like to kiss her and feel her breath on his neck, he would make it happen. He had come to tell her that he loved her.
There were people on porches down the other side of Loomis Street, watching the alien white boy walk up to Tina's shop. There was a black firebird in front of the store he didn't recognize, but that meant nothing to him, really. Dallas looked through the tinted window, but could not see past the counter. He opened the door and went in. The air conditioning chilled the sweat on his body, making him shiver. The television was off and a radio played somewhere in the back. Dallas started to call out for Tina, but there came a rumbling from the apartment. It was a man's voice. Dallas walked forward. He heard Tina giggle and he stopped again. That was his giggle. Who was she giving it to? He walked to the door.
He could see the back of a man's head- it was Butterfly- in a night stand mirror.Butterfly stood up suddenly and Dallas saw that he was naked. He had a huge phoenix tattooed on his back. Tina rose into view on the other side of him. She was naked also. Dallas could see little tattoos around her shoulders. He clenched his teeth. He thought he should leave. But he didn't move. Surely if he could see them, they could see him. But still he didn't move. Tina slowly wrapped her arms around Butterfly's neck and he kissed her lips. Dallas wanted to stop this before it went any farther. He would. He was a doer now. Butterfly sat down and laid back. Dallas saw Tina's breasts. Not small, but large? He didn't really know how big they got. She had a tattoo on her left breast just above her pink nipples and a few others adorning the softly pronounced curves of her hips. Butterfly's hand reached up and squeezed the tattooed breast as she climbed on top of him, postioned herself carefully, then slid down with a moan.
Dallas stared numbly into the mirror. He'd never actually seen people having sex. His heart raced, there was a pain in his crotch and he wanted to be in Butterfly's place. The phoenix rose into view as Butterfly sat up, burying his face in Tina's chest. Dallas felt he DESERVED to be in Butterfly's place. HE had defended Tina's honor today. Butterfly grunted, stood up with Tina's legs wrapped around his middle and slammed into the wall. Tina yelled. This would be a good chance for Dallas to burst in and stop this, saying Butterfly was hurting her, but then Tina began screaming "Yes! Yes!" And that crazy, flaming look in her eye- he'd never have guessed she could look so... hungry.
The lovers fell to the floor with a shout. Dallas craned his neck, but could no longer see them. Tina giggled. So did Butterfly. Then, they were silent. Dallas listened to them panting. He heard the rhythmic slap of flesh on flesh. He heard squishing. He heard Tina begin a low moan in staccato. Dallas' whole body was tight. He squeezed the lump in his jeans. His stomach spasmed in time to Tina's moaning as it grew louder. Butterfly began grunting in time to the wet slapping. Dallas closed his eyes. He wanted her to stop; to realize suddenly that she wanted to do this with him, instead. They got louder and louder still, until they crested their peak thunderously and inarticulately.
Dallas hadn't realized he was holding his breath until Butterfly and Tina started gasping for their own. He breathed in time with them, using their noise to cover his own as he stod up and returned to himself in the tattoo parlor.
Tina was still moaning a little as Dallas' blood calmed and he began to feel very ashamed of himself- for not leaving, for spying on them during such a private moment, for enjoying it and for wanting Tina. He thought they might open the door and find him there, but he felt too weak to walk. He listened to Tina and Butterfly's breathing slow down as they congratulated each other on their performance.
At length, he lifted leaden feet in tandem, forcing a slow, stiff lumber to the stool. He wanted to sit down, but feared the noise the creaking leather would make. He had no idea what to do. He would leave now, definitely, but he didn't want to come back. Not tomorrow or ever. It was all ruined for him here. He wouldn't be able to look at her again; not like he had today, when she was tending his wounds. The Tina that would be here tomorrow would be Butterfly's girlfriend. The woman he'd seen naked, sweating and...
And giving him a tattoo. He hadn't even known what she was drawing until it was over. She said she had drawn his heart, but he imagined, hoped, that it was hers. He heard a pair of scratches and fizzles. When the sharp scent of tobacco drifted out to him, he guessed Butterfly had brought cigarettes of his own. He walked gingerly to the front door and stepped outside.
The setting sun had bloodied the clouds and the bruise of evening was spreading across the sky. The swelter was gone, and the air was cooling. A rattle of keys caused Dallas to glance next door, where Mr. Bryant was locking up.
"Well, hello, young man!"
"Hey, Mr. Bryant." Dallas was careful not to look as crushed as he felt.
"You out here pretty late this evenin'."
"I just came by to talk to Tina."
"...Mm- hmm. But you leavin' now."
"Yeah, she's busy."
Mr. Bryant broke out in a chuckle. "Yeah, I believe she is..." He took his keys out of the lock. "I don't know what women see in boys like that."
"Me either. He's stupid. And ugly."
"And greasy."
"And trashy."
"Yeah, trashy. You know, you're the only kinda friend she has." They both looked at the Firebird. Dallas noted the Georgia license plate. "That boy ain't her friend."
"He's her somethin'...."
"Young man, everything gets complicated as you get older."
"This seems pretty simple."
"Well, things is best when you can keep 'em simple. But that's hard to do. Or not do."
Dallas looked at the firebird. He decided he didn't like the idea of the knife on his tattoo anyway.
Mr. Bryant looked up at the sky, then sideways at Dallas. "How late yo' mama gonna let you hang out on this side a' town?"
"She wants me home by dark," Dallas said, looking up.
"Boy, you better not keep yo' mama waitin'. She gave you life and she'll take it back."
"I don't know 'bout that."
"You better. Or gonna know somethin' when you get home.."
"May be."
"Git on outta heuh."
Dallas smiled and started home at a walk.
"I'll see you tommora'," Mr. Bryant said to his back.
"After school," Dallas called back as he began jogging, trying to catch up to his lengthening shadow.>
DF- 5/2000