Love and Other Wounds by Jordan Harper

motherfuckers say.”
    â€œQuaco?” I ask. “Who names somebody Quaco?”
    â€œI know I’m not hearing you talk that shit. Who named you Liver?”
    â€œYou did, motherfucker,” I say, and then we’re laughing. They call me Liver because I’m high yellow as a motherfucker, with a white mom and all, so back in the day Devin said I looked jaundiced. A bunch of the kids on the block had to run to the dictionary before they laughed at that one.
    â€œLet it slide,” he says. “Quaco ain’t the point here.”
    â€œAll right, then. If you got a point, lay it out.”
    â€œIt means if you can’t catch a slippery motherfucker, you catch what you can reach. Put a hurt on his homies, his pad, his family and shit. Don’t matter if they did anything wrong or not. If you can’t catch Quaco, you catch his shirt. You see what I’m saying?”
    â€œYou saying that you got beef with the Port Side, and you plan on getting real slippery. So if these dreadlock motherfuckers can’t get at you, they’re coming to get at me?”
    â€œLiver, I ain’t promising you they gonna come. I’m just saying, it’s in the realm of possibilities. It’s no secret that you and I put in work together. I ain’t trying to fuck with you. If I knew these motherfuckers got so damn tribal, I might have thought twice before lighting up Don Gorgon. I’m telling everyone I know to watch out. Don’t get a big head over it.”
    He gave it to me straight up. I don’t blame him. I’m a grown-ass man and I could have taken care of myself. But deep down I never thought the posse would come for me. Last week I thought I was going live forever. Now I’m counting seconds.
    Skinny saves my life three times. The first time was when he opened his mouth just before the yardies light us up. Every single one of them starts the killing with him. When the first claps come, I just drop. Bullets puff plaster and tiles over my head, but none of them touch me. That’s the second way Skinny saves my life. Motherfucker is so big that none of the yardies see that they don’t hit me. The third way Skinny saves me—wait on it.
    Skinny’s head hits the wall while most of him falls on top of me. My breath goes out. More weight crashes on my legs. I smash my nose against the tub floor. It’s gritty. No one’s cleaned this tub in an age. The shooting stops for the time it takes me to take one gasp of air and then it starts again, bullets raking the pile. One shot, slowed from going through Skinny, clangs loud against the side of the tub so close I can smell it. Each second I think it’s over, but nothing stops. There’s smoke and blood and booms and stench and mist and white noise from the showerhead.
    I’m not even grazed. The bodies on top of me shudder the last drops of life out of them. I wish those yardies turned the water warm. Not because I’m cold, I’m way past worrying about that, but because I can feel the difference between the cold water and the blood dripping hot off the corpses of my friends. A weight slams down, pressing my face harder against the floor of the tub. Dap fell out onto the floor when they turned him to a rag doll, and now they dump him back in. He empties like a tipped garbage pail.
    I try to listen. These boys have done their dirt. Now all they have to do is pack up the coke and hit the road. I can play dead until they leave. Then I find Devin and we go hunting for the rest of our days. Show these yardies what a war is. Just as soon as they leave. Just as soon as—
    The water rises. Some part of Kody blocks the drain. Shit’sbeen inching up and now it’s starting to fill my nose. If I twist my head, then Skinny on top of me will shift and the yardies might see it and do some double-checking. My arm’s extended over my head. I move it sloooow.
    â€œWhat you mean I’m’a