Marquise and Hudson excerpt

It was six stories of dust held up by 100 years of paint. And inside, they were spraying. Marquise shot fat yellow lines at the cracked white plaster wall and said softly, Real easy baby. Easy, now. He was negotiating—he coaxed his NYC fatty into swoops and jags of bright color. It was night—cold, breath out and white and then gone. Marquise’s little brother Hudson was on watch, perched up in a deep windowsill, his knees up to his chin, watching for cops through the gaps in the boarded windows. Let me do some, Hudson said. Please. Marquise changed the fatty at the end of his spray paint can for a flat tip. No one going to respect me if you do it, he said. But you messing it up, Hudson said. He lined a chalky circle on his knee with his index finger. I can do it better. Marquise grabbed green out of his drooping black trash bag. I told you no, he said.

The whine of floorboards, prickling at the neck. Hudson shot up and stood on the sill, startled straight. The big Texas moon crowded the window and pinned Hudson’s shadow to the floor. Someone here, he whispered. At least two of them. Hudson lifted his chin and squinted down over his nose, trying to catch a glint of smiling teeth, a flash of a watch, a small burst of white sneaker in the dark. Too many columns shoring up the paper ceiling, too many corners—anyone could be anywhere.

Another whine, closer, and Hudson was down off his perch. He waded around in the thick, cold air, lifting his long heron legs and bobbing his head. Marquise spayed faster, looping up and striking down thin beams of green and blue. Come on, baby, he said. He was carving out the last letter of his alias—MARS.

Who’s there? Hudson said. Then a voice rang out clear and hollow. This our spot, it said. And three dark, hunched ghosts slid sideways out from behind the doorway at the far end of the room.

The place used to be a writing bay for the Houston Times before the Chronicle bought them up, and the upturned desks made it impossible to see the three figures’ feet. They drifted forward.

Marquise was throwing a black outline around everything, cleaning up. Hudson drew close to his brother. I don’t see you with no cans, he said. We the one’s here.

Marquise finished outlining the S and bagged his spray paint. His eyes fumbled in the dark trying to pick out shapes. He heard something metal dragging on the concrete floor, and the sound approached with the three figures. Then a flash, quick and sharp, wrapped around the aluminum barrel of a baseball bat.

Three kids, young, Hudson’s age. Eleven, maybe. Their black outlines and dark skin barely popped out of the night that had them all surrounded. Marquise’s brain worked. You gonna write with a bat? he said. You ain’t got paint.

Another glint, higher this time around one of the kids’ necks, and suddenly all three looked like baseball card silhouettes, arms draped around the bats pressing down on their shoulders. Naw, the one in front said. But you do.

It was too quick—a cry of wind being ripped through then a shout clawing up through Hudson’s throat. The bat had come down on his thin left leg and busted it clean. Hudson fell sideways into his brother, who held him up, and Marquise swung his bag of metal canisters around his head once like a primitive slingshot and brought it around to meet the kid on the left’s face. The black plastic bag tore open and canisters and paint tips spewed into the still air looking like Christmas tinsel.

The kid in front laughed. Watch the paint, he said. We trying to write tonight. Marquise squeezed the empty black plastic bag . . . To be (maybe) continued~~