Blacktop Wasteland

by S.A. Cosby

A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he was meant to be. FRANK A. CLARK

“Don’t say ‘you just saying’ again. And don’t say you was wrong. Take. It. Back,”

“Don’t let these boys get your face fucked up. My cousin takes this shit seriously. Take it back and you can go home with all your teeth.”

“Sex lights?” the sweaty brother said. “Yeah, cuz when you see them, you’re fucked,”

“What county you from?” Beauregard asked. Deputy Jones shone the flashlight’s beam in Beauregard’s face. “Fuck You County, population of one,” Deputy Jones said.

“Everything in your wallet, fat boy. Or do you want to be a victim of police brutality?” Deputy Jones asked.

A lot of couples liked to say they couldn’t lie to each other. That their partner could spot their falsehoods from a mile away.

Her face was an open book and he had read every page a long time ago.

When he stepped off the porch, he could feel the sun beating down on him like he owed it money.

A mistake is a lesson, unless you make the same mistake twice.

The heat had gone from volcano to Hell in the span of twenty minutes.

Ant wasn’t perfect. He loved driving, drinking, and women, in that order. He lived life at 100 miles per hour.

Motherfuckers will look high and low for a reason to feel disrespected,”

Cruel, insensitive, manipulative, yes. Thief, no. The Montage men held down the thievery crown in his family.

That is, until you realized that no death is dignified. It’s a messy process. The Grim Reaper sneaks up behind you and squeezes you until shit fills your adult diaper and an artery bursts in your chest.

Beauregard didn’t know why Ronnie Sessions had come knocking at his door but he was going to have his friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson ask him.

Explanations were like assholes. Everyone has one and they are all full of shit.

He would sweet-talk her until she had Type 2 diabetes if he had to, but he couldn’t let her back out.

Because everyone knew in the end it always came down to money, honey.

The thing about loving someone was that they knew all your pressure points. They knew all the spots that were open and raw. You let them into your heart and they cased the place.

“If my dick ain’t the answer you ain’t asking the right questions.

For boys like Beauregard, college was the stuff of dreams. Mr. Skorzeny might as well have told him to go to Mars.

Them good ol’ boys always telling us to get over slavery, but they can’t get over having their ass handed to them by Sherman,” Boonie said.

He like to play dumb, but he as slick as two eels in a bucketful of snot.

You either gonna run the yard or you gonna be running in the streets. Man can’t be two types of beasts,’”

“Listen, when you’re a black man in America you live with the weight of people’s low expectations on your back every day. They can crush you right down to the goddamn ground. Think about it like it’s a race. Everybody else has a head start and you dragging those low expectations behind you. Choices give you freedom from those expectations. Allows you to cut ’em loose. Because that’s what freedom is. Being able to let things go. And nothing is more important than freedom. Nothing. You hear me, boy?”

“My Daddy says a risk always gotta be worth the reward.

But you gonna learn to live with it or you gonna die because of it.

“We are who we were meant to be,”

Some things when they get broke, you can’t put them back together.”

Money talks and everything else walks.

You done fucked up so bad you might wanna find your mama and crawl back in her snatch and try again.

If God couldn’t kill me when I was born, you two ain’t gonna do it now.

That was a chess move. Ronnie was strictly a checkers kind of guy.

“We always gonna be trash, Ronnie. Money ain’t gonna change that,” Reggie said. Ronnie opened his mouth to offer a rebuttal to Reggie’s assertion but none was forthcoming. The truth had a strange way of ending an argument.

The only person who knew your weak spots better than the woman who raised you was the woman who shared your bed.

Terror had a way of making smart men stupid.

“I never wanted any of this for you. Or your brother or your sister. But I brought it to you. Somebody else might have pulled the trigger, but I did this. I gotta own that. I hope someday you’ll know how sorry I am. No matter how things go today, I don’t think I’m ever going to see you again, Stink. So, I wanna tell you I love you. A father who really loves his children doesn’t do anything to hurt them. He doesn’t put them in harm’s way. Not on purpose. He ain’t an outlaw or a gangsta. It done took me a long time to realize that,”