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

hand.
    “What?” Nikki says.
    “You wanna rob a drug dealer?”

 
    THREE

     
    COY HAWKINS stands behind Nikki with his arms laid over her arms, his hands cupping her hands, his fingers on top of her fingers. As they pull the trigger he rams his shoulder into her shoulder.
    “Don’t flinch.”
    He walks over to Levi. He picks up his beer and points with it.
    “Go ahead,” Coy Hawkins says.
    Nikki raises the gun at the big house again.

     
    SHE WATCHES HIM push a brush through the barrel. She watches him drop oil on a rag and shine the black metal. The parts fit back together in hard snaps and the magazine clicks in last. He wipes his hands on a rag.
    “The first time’s the worst,” Coy Hawkins says.
    “I done it before,” Nikki says.
    He cuts his eyes to her.
    “Wesley Harrell,” she says.
    Coy Hawkins points his clean gun at one of the walls of the kitchen.
    “Oh yeah,” he says.

     
    SHE LOOKS AT HIM. She is startled by the bandanna around his face. A second ago he wasn’t wearing it. He pulls up his hood. He nods at her.
    She knocks on an apartment door, the welfare apartments in town that are gray and wooden and drop down to the riverbank.
    When the peephole darkens she takes one step back. The door catches on its chain.
    “Hey,” Nikki says.
    A man stares at her.
    “Who are you?”
    “Nikki,” she says.
    “Who?”
    “Can I use your phone?”
    “What?” he says.
    Nikki holds up Coy Hawkins’s cell.
    “Mine’s dead.”
    The man’s eyes flick up and down. Nikki smiles at him. She’s wearing a dress with see-through parts. Her cat’s eyes are slightly crooked but her lips are very red. When Angel left she left everything.
    Nikki jams her knee inside and touches his. He’s older than Coy Hawkins. His cheeks are cut by two deep lines.
    “Hold up,” he says.
    As soon as he slams the door Nikki takes two steps back, and when he opens it again, wide, unchained, Coy Hawkins pivots off the outside wall and slugs a baseball bat into the man’s gut.
    “What the fuck,” the man grunts.
    She crawls underneath him while Coy Hawkins smashes him over the back.
    No one’s in the living room. She turns a right for the kitchen like Coy Hawkins said. The other man, the important one, is sitting at a table. His name is Lee Church. He is nothing like she pictured him. She raises the gun and surges at him.
    “Drugs and cash,” Nikki says.
    He looks surprised.
    “Drugs and cash.”
    He just sits there. She starts to panic. She hears Coy Hawkins’s bat behind her. She stomps her high heel on the linoleum and lets out a little shriek.
    “Are you stupid? This is a motherfucking stickup.”
    Lee Church puts his cigarette in an ashtray and then he puts his hands up.

     
    THEY’RE PULLED OFF IN THE WOODS, out in the county. Coy Hawkins has a Ziploc bag of cocaine in his lap. Nikki has rubber-banded bills between her feet. That went well, Nikki thinks.
    “Don’t use your real name next time,” Coy Hawkins says.
    “Why not?” Nikki says.
    He dips the pickup key in the Ziploc. He looks at her. In the overhead light his face is like wax.
    “Bump?” he says.

     
    COKE SMELLS COLD AND CHEMICAL like the inside of a refrigerator. It’s what back then smells like, now when she thinks of it. Nikki takes a drag off Coy Hawkins’s Kool and its blast of menthol is the best thing that’s ever been in her mouth.
    The interstate reels out. The sign says thirty miles to Charlotte. Coy Hawkins has called somebody on his phone. It’s not really dead. This time he’s going to sell, Nikki thinks. She is giddy and she can’t feel her teeth.
    They have already passed over the service road. They have already passed over the gorilla pimp. They could be going anywhere.

     
    SHE LOOKS AROUND ALERTLY. She sniffs drip up her nose.
    “Where are we?” Nikki says.
    “Kannapolis,” Coy Hawkins says.
    “Where?”
    On both sides of a wide street every house is the same. They glow up in the headlights of the pickup,