The Other Brother Read online

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  Acknowledgments

  I would first like to thank the Creator, for giving me the gift of writing and the opportunity to share it with others.

  Thanks to my family and friends for the support and encouragement over the years.

  Thanks to my agent, my editor, and the entire staff at Kensington, for your efforts on my behalf.

  Thanks to the booksellers, for hand-selling my books in your stores and making them available to your customers.

  Thanks to the many book clubs that have discussed my novels, and, in many instances, invited me to participate in the discussions, including-and certainly not limited-to: Nia Imani Bookclub in Sacramento, California; GAAL Bookclub, in Atlanta; Sisters Turning Pages, in Atlanta; Imani Literary Group, in Atlanta; Ladies of Color Turning Pages, in Los Angeles; S.T.Y.L.E.S Bookclub, in Atlanta; Circle of Friends (and all of your wonderful chapters); R.A.W. Sistaz (all your chapters, too!); The Cushcity.com Bookclub and Circle of Essence, in Texas; and so many more.

  And thank you very much to the readers, without whom I would be unable to do this as a career. Keep on reading and spreading the word. Peace.

  (i tanding at his bedroom window, watching a thunderstorm I I building in the evening sky, Isaiah Battle touched the glass and thought about death.

  Death comes stealing like a thief in the night, he thought. Death came without warning, without preamble, invading suburban mansions and inner-city housing projects, taking away the young and the old, the feeble and fit. No one was spared. And no one was safe.

  Not even him. Especially not him.

  For most of Isaiah's life, the veil separating life from death had been as thin as the cold windowpane on which his fingers rested.

  He pursed his lips, took his hand away from the window. Ordinarily he did not contemplate such macabre thoughts. But today he couldn't avoid them.

  It was like that when you expected someone was coming to kill you.

  He was dressed in a gray button-down shirt, loose-fitting Levi's, and black Timberlands. The ends of the shirt flowed over his waist, concealing, he hoped, the bulge of the Glock nine-millimeter handgun he wore holstered on his hip.

  Mama knew he owned guns, but she didn't like for him to carry them around the house. Tonight he didn't dare walk unarmed for a moment, not even while in his own home.

  There was a rap at the door. Isaiah spun, quick as a cobra, hand flicking to the Glock.

  "Dinner's ready," Mama said behind the door.

  He relaxed. "Be there in a minute."

  He turned back to the window.

  The churning April sky, resembling the face of a wrathful god, offered him no comfort. The brewing storm made him edgy. And the urban wasteland beyond the glass-the dilapidated houses, trash-strewn sidewalks, and pothole-riddled streets of Chicago's Southside-fired up an old, familiar anger that simmered in his chest like heartburn.

  We deserve a better life than this. We never should have been here.

  A battered desk stood beside the window. Photographsclippings from business magazines and newspapers-covered the desktop.

  Many of the photos depicted two black men standing together, dressed in expensive suits, clearly father and son, the consummate family entrepreneurs. Other pictures featured only the son, a dapper guy in his late twenties who had life by the balls, and his wide grin showed that he knew it, too.

  Resentment rippled through Isaiah.

  Another photograph, framed and standing at the edge of the pile, showed the father from the other pictures, in his youth, and a pretty black woman with an Afro. They sat at a table in one of those Japanese hibachi restaurants, smiling as if they would be young and beautiful forever.

  He didn't know why he'd pulled out the pictures. Looking at them had the predictable effect of stoking his anger. He supposed that he was in an introspective mood, ruminating on his life and how it was so unfair that it had turned out this way.

  He picked up the framed photograph. It was wallet-sized, and the glass front was cracked. It had been damaged when, in a rage, he'd flung the photo against a wall.

  He double-checked that his shirt covered his gun and then left the bedroom, tucking the picture in his pocket. He checked in both directions along the dark hallway. Looking for a hidden intruder. No one was in there.

  It was just him and Mama, like always. Mother and son against the world.

  Mama sat at the kitchen table, smoking a Newport. The table was set for dinner. But she hadn't eaten. The aromas of fried chicken, greens, cornbread, and other foods rose from the battery of pots and pans on the counter and stove.

  Mama's gaze flicked across the bulge underneath his shirt. Disapproval flared in her eyes. Mama was a long way from stupid.

  Isaiah moved his hand to conceal the gun. "You didn't have to wait for me, Mama"

  "It's Sunday," she said, as if that explained everything. And it did. Mama believed in sit-down family meals on Sundays, and he obliged her.

  She believed in attending church services on Sundays, too, but he refused to go along with that. He believed in God, but he no longer believed God cared about people like him. His initial realization of God's indifference to his plight came during his first stint in juvenile detention, when two teenage bullies, beating him because he was new, laughed mockingly when he cried out for God to help him.

  And his faith hadn't been helped when, as a teenager, he'd seen the pastor of their church a married man with three kids hurrying out of Mama's bedroom one night, yanking up his slacks around his waist.

  Fifty-two years old but looking much older, Mama hadn't lured any philandering pastors or other men of note into her bedroom in a long time. She was a short, slender woman, with chestnut skin and almond-shaped, copper-brown eyes. Her brittle hair, dyed red but showing stark gray roots, was pulled back into a severe bun. She wore a shapeless blue dress, like an old church lady.

  Isaiah remembered when, back in the day, brothers driving by Mama would honk and yell crude come-ons. She was far removed from the pretty, vibrant young thing who'd posed in the photo at the Japanese restaurant. Although black women tended to age well, years of hardscrabble living, cigarettes, and drinking had taken the luster off her complexion, added a net of wrinkles to her face, slowed her stroll, and drawn dark circles underneath her once lively eyes.

  Mama, too, deserved a better life.

  She rose, bones creaking, and began to fix plates for both of them. She didn't always get his food for him. But ever since he'd been released from state prison at the beginning of the year, she'd given him extra care and attention, as if he were a wounded bird that required TLC before he could spread his wings again. He didn't have the heart to tell her he'd never flown.

  He didn't like for Mama to cater to him, but she'd snap at him if he resisted, so he sat at the table and waited. He looked around at the fancy new things she'd recently bought. The oak dining set. The bone china and silverware and glasses. The new microwave, food processor, rotisserie oven, and mixer.

  And he thought about the stuff in the other rooms: the Queen Anne furniture, the opulent draperies, the antique vases, and crystal bowls. The kind of luxuries she'd always wanted, but never had been able to afford.

  The expensive items were pathetically out of place in their cramped, crumbling home. They'd inherited the house six years ago from his grandmother, moving there from the roachinfested apartment in the infamous Robert Taylor Homes, where he'd spent his youth. Grandma's house didn't need new furniture and appliances; it needed to be renovated, and extensively at that. The hardwood floor was missing boards, dents marred the walls, the roof leaked, and in
the winter, the wind whistled like a banshee through the rooms, the result of poor insulation. Packing the place with fine new things was as ludicrous as putting ten-thousand-dollar rims on a rust-bucket car fit only for a junkyard.

  But who was he to tell her what to do with her money? When he'd given her the check for fifty thousand dollarsguilt money from his dad-Mama had shrieked so loudly you would've thought she'd won the lottery.

  He hadn't taken any of the money for himself. He didn't deserve it. Mama did. She'd sacrificed so much trying to raise him right that she deserved fifty grand times a thousand.

  A rumble of thunder barreled through the night, clinking the dishes on the table. Wind tested the windows, like fingers trying to pry inside.

  Isaiah cocked his head, listening for sounds of forced entry, aware that the thunderstorm might provide covering noise for intruders. But there was nothing. Yet.

  Mama returned to the table with his plate. She'd heaped it with fried chicken, spaghetti, turnip greens, and a hunk of cornbread. Good, old-fashioned soul food. She took a glass pitcher out of the refrigerator and filled his tumbler with the extra-sweet, Kool-Aid lemonade he'd loved since he was a kid.

  "Thanks, Mama," he said. "Looks good"

  "Tastes better," she said-her customary response. She got her own plate and sat across from him. Reaching for his hand, she bowed her head to pray.

  He bowed his head, too, but only for her benefit. He'd given up praying after his first beating in juvie detention.

  Thunder rocked the house as his mother prayed in a steady voice. He never understood how she managed to pray, as if she were so certain that God actually listened to her and gave a damn. He wanted to shake her sometimes, scream at her that she was wasting her time. But he kept his mouth shut and allowed her to nurture her illusions. Everyone had to believe in something.

  She concluded the prayer and picked up her fork. He reached into his pocket and placed the photograph on the table.

  Mama scowled. "Why'd you bring that in here? You know how much I hate that damn picture."

  He shrugged. He wasn't quite sure why he'd brought it, just as he wasn't sure why he'd dragged out all those other photos on his desk. Maybe he was indulging in self-flagellation, or feeling angry at life, as he was prone to do sometimes.

  On other occasions, Mama would look at the pictures he'd clipped, too. She'd pay special attention to the photos of the son, as if wondering why Isaiah's life had not followed the same track as his.

  "Put it away," she said.

  But he left it sitting there. "Do you ever wonder how things might've turned out if you'd married him?"

  She did not look at the photo, or at him. Her gaze drifted to the wall, and her eyes hardened as though she didn't like what she saw there. "Never. He was married to another woman, you know that"

  "But what if he'd left her for you?"

  "Then we'd be living in the lap of luxury in Atlanta, wouldn't we? You would've gone to school instead of prison, and I'd be spending all day getting my nails done and shopping at Bloomingdale's. Right?" She turned to him. Fire flashed in her eyes, and he caught a glimpse of the feisty woman she'd been before life had beaten her down. "I'm gonna tell you one last time put that picture away. It makes me so sick I might lose my appetite."

  "Sorry, Mama," he said. "Sometimes I just wonder, that's all."

  "Ain't no use in wondering. Shit. We'd better be happy he gave us the money that he did. It ain't fair, but that's life, huh?"

  He wasn't satisfied with her answer, but there was no other answer to be found. He reached for the photo.

  Thunder cracked again, and it almost masked the sound he'd been preparing for: the front door banging open as if struck with a battering ram.

  He slid his hand to the Glock.

  They had arrived.

  "They" were a couple of thugs with whom he'd gotten into a scuffle at a party last Friday night. Held in a cramped project apartment, it had been a typical ghetto house party: a two-dollar cover charge to get in, dark as midnight, music so loud your head pounded in sync with the beat, blunt smoke thick in the air, drinks being passed freely, and wall-to-wall brothas and sistas, their horny bodies emanating cologne, hair grease, and funk.

  He had been talking to a fine sista with cocoa skin and a luscious body, and she was digging him, encouraging him, devouring his words as if they were the sweetest taffy, when suddenly a guy with dreadlocks popped up and claimed to be her boyfriend. Dreads ordered Isaiah to step the fuck back or he'd knock him flat on his back. Never one to back down from a fight or allow another man to disrespect him, he'd gotten in Dreads's face. Threats flew, followed soon by fists. He punched Dreads in the jaw; someone slammed a fist into his ribs; Dreads's bald-headed partner came at him, and Isaiah dropped Baldie with a blow to the kidney. Then someone in the background drew a gun and fired, shattering a windowand the party goers fled the apartment like roaches caught under a lamp.

  The party was over. But that hadn't been the end of it. On the streets, grudges didn't die they multiplied. He'd known that Dreads and Baldie would be coming for him. It was only a matter of when.

  All because of a woman. It was stupid and petty, but that was typical. In prison he'd once seen a brother get shanked because another guy thought the dude was cheating on a PlayStation game. Black men killed each other over trivial machismo bullshit every day.

  Footsteps hammered across the floor. From the kitchen, he couldn't see the intruders, and they couldn't see him either. The kitchen was at the end of the hall, and the table was in the corner, tucked away from the doorway.

  But they would soon find him.

  Mama looked at him. Fear shone in her eyes.

  Isaiah hated that she'd been pulled into this situation. He could have stayed with a lady friend, laid low for a while. But the danger in doing so was that these guys might hurt Mama in order to get back at him. He'd seen it happen too many times. He had to stay home to protect her.

  "What have you done?" she asked in a whisper that nonetheless held a note of accusation.

  He hadn't told her anything about the fight at the party. Trouble had shadowed him all his life. Mama would know from bitter experience that he was mixed up in another mess.

  "Go down to the basement," he whispered. He motioned to the narrow door behind the table; it led to the cellar. "I'll handle this."

  She shook her head. Tears trickled down her face. How many times had she wept for him? It amazed him that she had any tears left.

  "I'll call the police," she said.

  "You know I'm still on parole," he said. "Those clowns might arrest me "

  Mama only looked at him, and a surprising thought hit him: That was what she wanted. She was sick of him and would rather have those assholes send him back to prison.

  He couldn't say that he blamed her. He had been a burden for her since the day he was born.

  But he wasn't going back to jail, ever again.

  "Please, Mama," he said. "Downstairs. Hurry."

  Choking back a sob, Mama quickly pushed away from the table. She opened the cellar door and descended into the darkness beyond.

  He heard the thugs at the front of the house, overturning furniture and tearing through the bedrooms. Something shattered. Probably one of those expensive vases Mama had bought.

  His hands tightened into fists. Mama didn't deserve to suffer for his deeds. He was going to take care of these motherfuckers.

  Standing, he lifted his shirt and closed his hand around the Glock's cold grip. He'd paid a lot for this piece. Now it was time to see what it could do.

  He moved to the kitchen doorway and peered around the frame.

  One of the thugs was coming down the hallway. He was a black man, wide as a refrigerator, a doo-rag capping his dome. It wasn't Dreads or Baldie, but a different brother, another member of the crew. Doo Rag's eyes were slits of onyx.

  Doo Rag had a gun, too. The gun in his hands looked like a cannon at first, but it was really a shotgun, saw
ed-off, probably a twelve-gauge, nonetheless an absolutely lethal weapon.

  Doo Rag spotted him and pulled the trigger.

  So did Isaiah.

  The gunfire was deafening in the house, underscored by a boom of thunder.

  Buckshot plowed into the door frame, splinters flyingand part of the buckshot spray ripped into Isaiah's shoulder. He screamed and staggered sideways, knocking against a counter.

  He quickly regained his composure. He'd been shot before; this was only another battle in the ongoing war of his life. He didn't feel much pain yet, but he knew it was coming, an express train of agony on the way.

  Looking into the hall, he noted with satisfaction that he'd drilled the thug between the eyes. Doo Rag lay sprawled on his back in the hallway, lips parted in an unfinished prayer. Dead.

  Isaiah felt nothing-no sorrow, no pity. Although it wasn't the first time he'd killed a man, each time he did it he felt less for his victim, and in his moments of introspection, that bothered him, made him wonder if he'd lost his humanity.

  But he didn't have time to think about that right now. There were, by the sounds of it, at least two more men in the house. One of them poked his head into view at the end of the corridor. Baldie.

  He fired at Baldie, and the thug jumped out of sight. He'd missed him.

  Pain gnawed deep into his shoulder. He looked at his wound, saw dark blood soaking his shirt.

  Dizziness swam through him.

  I can't go out like this.

  But he was fading. His legs buckled and he spilled onto the linoleum like a drunken uncle. He hooked his hand around the table leg and pulled it, fuzzily thinking he could use the table as a shield. The table tilted to the floor, hot food and lemonade spattering around him.

  Isaiah hauled the table in front of him, propped his back against the row of cabinets, and positioned the Glock atop the edge of the table to steady his aim.

  His vision was beginning to get blurry.