“See,this that stuff I didn’t miss. Wasn’t it 70 degrees in this mothafucka yesterday? And now I need a damn puffy ass parka and some Tims!” I complained to my cousin and best friend Truth as we walked down his driveway to the onyx Bentayga S that I had left running.
He snorted, his breath making a little cloud in the chilly air as he mugged me.
“Welcome home, with yo’ weak ass. You gon’ whine like this all day?” he groused, yanking open the front passenger door of the vehicle and climbing his tall ass in.
I took the driver’s seat before shooting him a nasty look.
“Ay, you can take yo’ irritable and irritating ass right back in that house—” I started.
He scoffed as he adjusted the seat. “You invited me for this ride along, my guy. Don’t threaten me with a good time. I be happy in my little house, in my own space.”
It was my turn to jeer at him and his rosy little description.
“All right, old ass ‘my home is my sanctuary’ nigga. Gon’ back in there and bake some cookies to offer the mailman or something, then,” I dared him.
We sat at a standoff for a minute before he sucked his teeth.
“Drive the damn car, Jay,” he finally grumbled.
“That’s what the fuck I thought,” I shot back, preparing to pull away from his house.
“You leave for a few years and get amnesia, huh, bruh? Welcome back to North Louisiana. Just FYI, I will still DDT yo’ ass and put yo’ head through this floorboard. And I’m the same grouchy dude you been knowing, so stop acting brand new,” Truth threatened.
I shook my head as we passed the changed-but-familiar scenery of little Emancipation, Louisiana, population nine thousand in a good year. Truth wasn’t lying. He’d been grouchy since we were young, but he was a stand-up guy, the kind of man you wanted on your team if you got caught up or jammed up.
“Hell we goin’?” he grumbled.
“Town Hall first. My Aunt Alayna wants to see me.”
“The mayor?”
“The one and only.”
He grunted and then relaxed into his seat. Our ride to the seat of Emancipation’s government was quiet except for the sound of The Alchemist flowing from my speakers. Truth was busy on his phone as I took in the hometown that I hadn’t set eyes on in nine years. It was decorated for the holidays, the light poles strung with lights and a variety of big stockings, angels, bells, dreidels, and lamps that would be brightly illuminated at nightfall. A big Santa Claus waved from the field that would holdpicnics and concerts in the spring. The decorations themselves were new, but they were the same theme from my childhood. It made me realize how much I missed this place, even though I’d met up with family and friends elsewhere.
The only reason I was home now was because my great aunt Ola Katherine—aka Ms. Ola Kate—swore she was near death. Ms. Ola Kate had raised my mother and Aunt Alayna when my grandparents died in a house fire, apparently looking for each other. I was the closest thing she had to a grandson, and she had issued one order: “Jabali Christopher, stop running and come home!”
Now, my ol’ lady was tripping a little. Jabali Christopher ran from no one and nothing. Just because I knew being in Emancipation withoutherwould feel strange?—
“I know you ain’t been gon’ so long you forgot where Town Hall is. Put that blinker on and swing this left, man,” Truth spoke up, breaking into my thoughts.
“Oh, shit!”
I really had been about to miss my turn. I slid into the left turn lane and barely made it before the light changed.
“The cold got you acting like that? Wasn’t yo’ ass stationed in Quantico for a minute? I know it got colder there,” he harassed me as I pulled into a spot on the side of the building, fronted in red brick like everything else on historic Main Street.
I gestured toward Town Hall. “You going in or you gon’ stay out here talking shit?” I asked him.
Truth’s lip curled in a sneer. “You ain’t neva struck me as a dude with a death wish,” he spat. But he climbed out when I did. We strolled into the building, past gawking interns and clerks, up to the divided desk where one of the people working the huge desk stepped to the window with a cheerful smile and a Santa hat and asked if she could help us.
“I’m here to see Mayor Shipley-Melrose. Tell her it’s?—"
“I know who you are, Jabali Christopher. Give me a minute.”
I stared at her for a moment, feeling bad as hell because I truly couldn’t place her, and the name tag reading “Genie” didn’t help. NineTen years was a long time. Add on the trauma I’d faced…
“I’m sorry, but what’s—” I started.
