Free Young God: A Novel by Katherine Faw Morris Page B

turns to her. It’s somebody else’s. Nikki lurches from it.
    “What?” the girl says.

     
    THERE’S A DEAD RAT hanging from the trailer when she gets back. It’s strung up by a foot and tied to the doorknob. It’s skinny. It’s silky gray. Nikki rips it down.
    Levi is not in the yard. He did not escort her up the hill either. She marches to the other trailer and slams the rat against the front door. Its head explodes.
    “Levi,” Nikki yells.
    “Nikki,” Coy Hawkins says.
    She flips to him. He’s standing on their top step. He has their door wide open. He snaps at her.
    “Now,” he says.
    Inside the pink hole is bigger than she remembers. She stands in the middle of the living room staring at it.
    “What’s that?” Coy Hawkins says.
    Nikki’s holding a grocery bag. She looks at it.
    “A ki,” she says.
    “A ki.”
    Coy Hawkins is standing in front of her.
    “I went to Junior’s,” she says.
    “Junior’s,” he says.
    “Yeah.”
    He’s really close to her face.
    “Junior let you in the kitchen?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And what did you have to do for him?”
    Nikki purses her lips. She looks at him. He looks coiled up. He looks cracked out.
    “Nothing,” she says.
    “You got the money from Wesley Harrell?”
    Nikki shrugs. She kicks the coffee table and her boot rings.
    “He’s got investors,” she says.
    Coy Hawkins is rocking on his feet. He’s blocking her from the hallway. She tries to see around him. They’re the only ones here.
    “Where is everybody?” she says.
    “The feds give cash,” Coy Hawkins says.
    Nikki looks at him.
    “What?”
    “They buy steak dinners, too,” he says.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Who else you seen while you were out?”
    “Nobody,” she says.
    “You ain’t seen Lee Church?”
    He’s trembling.
    “No.”
    “You ain’t seen my sister?”
    “In prison?”
    “You ain’t seen Robby Greer?”
    “Who?”
    “What do you mean who? The goddamn sheriff.”
    Nikki takes a step back.
    “Your story’s full of holes,” Coy Hawkins says.
    She shakes her head.
    “Everything’s there.”
    Another step.
    “You just ain’t listening,” she says.
    He grabs her as soon as she starts to run. She sticks out her hand but he gets her by the hair until all she can see are his eyes, which are the blackest beads. It’s happening again, she thinks, wildly.
    “You could have got yourself killed.”
    “Daddy,” Nikki says.
    Coy Hawkins yanks her arm the wrong way.

 
    FOUR

     
    SHE IS NOT DEAD.
    She smells piss when she peels herself off the living room floor. Coy Hawkins is in his chair. He has a fist to his lips and he’s jittering his knee up and down.
    It takes her a while to get to the door. It takes her forever to cross the yard. On the steps of the other trailer she has to squat down with the grocery bag. She sees rat brains. She pukes between her feet. Levi swings the door out.
    “Look at your face,” Levi says.

     
    “BILLIE,” Nikki says.
    Levi’s grandmama is in the bedroom. She’s on the brass bed under the chintzy comforter. Nikki recognizes that. Nikki does not recognize her.
    Her cheeks are hollow. Her hair is messy and white. She looks like an old woman. She’s swallowed by throw pillows.
    Nikki shoves her.
    “Billie.”
    Her eyes are closed. They’re heavy hoods.
    “She’s sick,” Levi says.
    Nikki stares at her.
    Back down the hall she holds on to the wall. In the living room she sees the stiff couch with the hump in its back. All this furniture is from the big house. Nikki climbs onto it on her knees. She tucks her head in a corner of it. She balls herself up.

     
    THIS TRAILER is a twin to the other one. Except nothing is the same. Here there are fake flowers on fake vines and branches. There are boxes, bowls, and pitchers of potpourri. There are yellow-looking doilies and frog-shaped ashtrays.
    The dust sometimes looks like spiderwebs and sometimes looks like lace. It hangs from the ceiling. It trails down the