YOU AND ME, KID

I wasn't looking for nothing. I don't know why I needed to tell you that – just felt like it needed to be said.

I mean, Curtis is nearly a grown man. I haven't gone poking around in his room in a long time. Probably since he was thirteen, I thought he might be queer. Never thought I'd be so glad to find a pile of girlie rags stuffed inside the box spring. I'm not proud of it, no, but I was happy.

Course, if I had known those magazines would have led to my baby spending a year with that whore Nicole Ryan, I wouldn't have been so happy. Little tramp – apple didn't fall far from the tree there, did it? Girl never stood a chance, mom like that.

Anyway, like I said, I wasn't snooping or nothing. Just went in yesterday to put some clean towels in his bathroom. Never seen nobody use the same towel as long as Curtis does – by the end of the week, the thing's walking out of the bathroom on its own, begging me to wash it. So, I grab the old towel, leave him nothing but new ones, hoping he'll take the hint, you know?

His father was like that – couldn't take a hint. I know I don't talk about him much – don't know that I've ever even told you his name. In my head, I call him Donor Number Nineteen, on account of that's how many months he laid around on my couch before I wised up and threw his ass out.

Sorry – threw his tail right out in the street. Heard he's back in prison again. Funny – Curtis never wanted for his advice the whole time he's a kid, but I reckon he could use it now.

So now I got the towels in the basket, headed for the laundry, and I figure I'll go ahead and do the sheets, too – they smell bad enough, anyway. I reach down, pick the top sheet off the floor, toss it in the basket. I grab the fitted sheet, pull it off the mattress – and that's when I see it.

I probably wouldn't even have noticed it if that detective hadn't stopped by last Sunday. Said he was looking for Curtis – that part didn't surprise me, not really. I was a little surprised that I wasn't surprised, if you know what I mean, and I was a little surprised that it had taken this long for somebody to come knocking. But I wasn't surprised. Not really.

Anyway. I told the detective the truth – Curtis wasn't around, he'd been staying the last couple weeks over at Barry's. I got the feeling the detective knew all that already – he never even asked me Barry's last name.

Say I was to have seen something, I said to this detective, looks like he cuts his own hair. I tell you, I said to him, send my boy off to prison – what kind of mother does that make me?

That woman, Ms. Thompson, the one Curtis and Barry killed, he said to me, She was somebody's mother, too.

I didn't have much to say to that.

I'm not gonna insult your intelligence, say I don't know nothing about guns. I've made enough mistakes in my life – Curtis' father for one, plenty more just like him. Not gonna lie to you – I know guns.

And the gun that detective asked me if I'd seen, the one he said the boys used? That's the exact same gun I saw stuffed in the hole in the boxspring, right on top of those same old girlie magazines.

My first thought? Not the same gun. Not necessarily. Same kind of gun, yeah, but not necessarily the one killed that lady.

My second thought? It's the same gun.

So, I leave it there – don't touch it, just grab the basket, toss it in the wash. The detective had left his card there in the kitchen, laying on the table. I picked it up, flipped it a couple times in my hand, then picked up the phone and dialed Barry's mama at her job to see if she had a number for where the boys were staying. She did, and I wrote it on the back of the detective's card.

Why you asking, Shelly? she said.

Just want to talk to my boy, I said.

Get him away from that little prick son of yours, I wanted to say but didn't.

I thanked Wanda, hung the phone back on the wall. I sat there a minute while the washing machine filled beside me, the water so loud I could barely think.

So, I guess what I'm asking you – what would your mama do? I think I know the answer – she give you up when it came time, just like they asked. Anybody ask her how she felt about it? Maybe they did, I don't know. I don't remember reading that part in Sunday School.

See, the thing is, that boy's all I got left. Like that song – the one man that's left in my heart. I know that ain't quite how it goes, but that's how I hear it in my head. My baby boy.

When Curtis was four years old, we hit a pretty rough patch. Not that I'm telling you nothing you don't already know – I was on the line pretty regular to you back then. Anyway, one of those nights we was sleeping in the back seat of the car, Curtis just wouldn't stop crying. Yelling, shaking, carrying on and on – I couldn't do nothing to calm him down. I wasn't mad at him – nobody should have to see the things he'd seen, especially not a little boy that still wet the bed.

I didn't know what else to do, so I pinned his arms up against his sides and held him like that so he couldn't move, his back up against my chest. I whispered in his ear – you and me, kid, over and over. You and me, kid. Mama won't ever let anybody hurt you. Just like that, over and over, and eventually he stopped shaking. Then he stopped crying, and then he went to sleep.

Another story: when Curtis was sixteen, my back went out and I couldn't work, so he had to quit school for a while so we'd still have some money coming in. He wouldn't let me ask where he was working, where the money was coming from. It was probably better that way, the part of me not wanting to know bigger than the part that did. He was so proud, handing me that envelope with two months' rent inside. You and me, kid, he said, and my heart just about burst.

Don't get me wrong – there's been times before I've played dumb, not remembered things, out and lied, even. I ain't proud of it, but I did it.

But this one feels different, somehow. Maybe it's what the detective said about that woman being somebody's mama, I don't know. There must not be much of a case without the gun, or that detective'd be talking to Curtis downtown instead of talking to me out here at the house. He's just working a hunch – without that gun, he ain't really got nothing.

But what if Curtis is just holding it for Barry? He better talk to the police before Barry does. That little bastard'll pin the whole thing on my baby in a minute, just to save his own worthless ass.

Neck. Sorry.

So, I guess I'm just looking for some help. I never asked you for much, just the strength to stack one day on top of the last. Just give me a sign – I don't need a burning bush or a rainbow or nothing like that.

Just give me something.

Anything.

Tell me what to do.

BIO: Frank Byrns lives in suburban Maryland and writes about the rural South. Some of his previous stories have been published in such markets as Shotgun Honey, All Due Respect, Plan B Magazine, and the WW Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction.

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