Garfield Potter sat low behind the wheel of an idling Caprice, his thumb stroking the rubber grip of the Colt revolver loosely fitted between his legs. On the bench beside him, leaning against the passenger window, sat Carlton Little. Little filled an empty White Owl wrapper with marijuana and tamped the herb with his thumb. Potter and Little were waiting on Charles White, who was in the backyard of his grandmother’s place, getting his dog out of a cage.
“It don’t look like much, does it?” said Potter, looking down at his own lap.
Little grinned lazily. “That’s what the girls must say when you pull that thing out.”
“Like Brianna, you mean? Your girl? She ain’t had no chance to look at it, ’cause I was waxin’ her from behind. She felt it, though. Made her forget all about you, too. I mean, when I was done hittin’ it she couldn’t even remember your name.”
“She couldn’t remember hers either, drunk as she had to be to fuck a sad motherfucker like you.”
Little laughed some as he struck a match and held it to the end of the cigar.
“I’m talkin’ about this gun, fool.” Potter held up the Colt so Little, firing up the blunt, could see it.
“Yeah, okay. Where’d you get it at, man?”
“Traded it to this boy for half an OZ. Was one of those project guns, hadn’t even been fired but once or twice. Short barrel, only two inches long, you’d think it couldn’t do shit. But this here is a three fifty-seven. They call it a carry revolver, ’cause you can carry this shit without no one knowin’ you strapped. I don’t need no long barrel, anyway. I like to work close in.”
“I’ll stick with my nine. You don’t even know if that shits works.”
“It works. Yours jams, don’t be askin’ me for mines.”
Potter was tall, light skinned, flat of stomach and chest, with thin, ropy forearms and biceps. He kept his hair shaved close to the scalp, with a small slash mark by way of a part. His irises were dark brown and filled his eyes; his nose was a white boy’s nose, thin and aquiline. He was quick to smile. It was a smile that could be engaging when he wanted it to be, but more often than not it inspired fear.
Little was not so tall. He was bulked in the shoulders and arms, but twiggish in the legs. A set of weights had given him the show muscles upstairs, but his legs, which he never worked on, betrayed the skinny, malnourished boy he used to be. He wore his hair braided in cornrows and kept a careless, weedy thatch of hair on his chin.
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