Read Online Young God: A Novel by Katherine Faw Morris - Free Book Online Page B

friends?” she yells at him.
    Before she opens the trailer door she stands on her tiptoes. She peers into the window that looks like a fan.
    The living room’s empty. The man in the kitchen squints at her. He grins. He slaps his hand on the card table.
    “Jesus Christ, look at her.”
    Nikki stands in the kitchen doorway and stares at him.
    “You remember me?” he says.
    “No,” she says.
    Yes, she does. His face is mostly teeth.
    “Come on. I used to be over at the house all the time.”
    He chins toward the big house. He’s sitting across from Coy Hawkins.
    “You took my fucking truck,” Coy Hawkins says.
    The crack looks like a sugar cookie. It’s knotted in a baggie, white and flat. It’s on the table by Coy Hawkins’s fingers. Nikki nods at it.
    “What’s that?” she says.
    Coy Hawkins takes a long guzzle of his beer before he looks at her again.
    Absently Nikki drops the bag in her hands.
    “I got you steak,” she says.

     
    SHE HATES THE SMELL OF CRACK. It makes her heart race. It makes her nervous. Every five minutes it sneaks its burning-plastic stink under the bathroom door.
    Back then she used to sing. She hums to herself. She fumbles with a balloon. She almost rips off her new nails. She can’t do anything with them.
    Gunshots. Hunters.
    “It’s okay,” she says.
    Later she sits in a ring of burnt foil. She looks at her arms and legs. She is so pale, she thinks. Though it’s summer still.

     
    HE FUCKS HER UP AGAINST THE DRESSER. She puts her hands out so her head doesn’t slam the mirror. Something is rubbing a raw place on her neck. She turns and grabs his ear in her teeth and jerks. He staggers back. Onto the carpet she spits a diamond stud. When she looks at him his face is as pretty as always.
    “Didn’t my daddy cut you?”
    The gorilla pimp shoves a gun in her mouth. That’s how he does it. Nikki fights to wake up.

     
    WESLEY’S IN THE YARD.
    “Don’t shoot,” he says.
    It’s just him. He’s grinning. Nikki looks at her hands but she doesn’t have a gun or a knife or anything. She sways on the steps. She’s really high.
    “Can I come in?”
    She wonders what her hair looks like. She touches it. Nikki shrugs at him.
    They sit at the card table.
    “He here?” Wesley says.
    Nikki looks down the hall at the shut bedroom door and shakes her head.
    “How much you want?” she says.
    “A ki,” Wesley says.
    Nikki thinks about this. She reaches down and scratches her leg.
    “A ki?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Who goes from two ounces to a ki?” she says.
    “Look, I got the money. If you can get it,” Wesley says.
    Nikki looks at him.
    She picks up the pen on the table. She grabs his arm and stretches it out and writes the number of her new phone on the inside of it.
    Wesley’s grinning again. The bedroom door opens. Coy Hawkins comes out. He is butt-naked except for his boots. Nikki watches him walk down the hall and into the kitchen.
    He opens the refrigerator. He closes it with a beer in his hand. His dick is not tall and pink. It hangs like a shrimp from a matted tuft of hair. He looks at them.
    “Sup?” Wesley says.
    Coy Hawkins cracks his beer. Nikki watches him walk back down the hall and into the bedroom and shut the door.
    Under the table Wesley kicks her.

     
    “YOU KNOW HOW MUCH A KI COSTS?”
    “A lot,” Nikki says.
    Coy Hawkins looks at her.
    “Yeah,” he says.
    In the kitchen he’s opening all the cabinets.
    “So what you gotta ask yourself is where is he getting the money?” Coy Hawkins says.
    “Where do you think?”
    Coy Hawkins looks at her again. His eyes get wide.
    “It could be a lot of people,” he says.
    He opens all the drawers.
    “What are you doing?” Nikki says.
    “Looking for something.”
    “Why were you naked before?”
    “I was jerking off.”
    “Oh,” she says.
    Coy Hawkins is holding a crack pipe. The glass is clouded up. It’s already burnt brown. He points it at her.
    “That boyfriend of yours is trying to cut us