Copperhead

    Fruit.  That would be his most vivid recollection of the meetings years later; deep, silver bowls set out upon the worn Formica top of the kitchen table, mounding with sliced honeydew, cantaloupe, and banana.
    “Samuel!”
    He yanked his hand away, successfully plucking a cube of melon and popping it into his mouth.
    “Go outside and play with your friends.  It will be too crowded in here soon.”  His mother bent over the table and rearranged the fruit in the bowl, as if he had upset a delicate symmetry with the removal of one small piece.  She wore a traditional Liberian blouse (bubba) and skirt (lappa) with a matching head-tie cut from the same flowered pattern, colored a brilliant cardinal and lime.
      “It’s too cold out.  Besides, I want to stay for the meeting,” he said.
    “The meeting is for men.  You are still a boy until I say otherwise,” his mother said.  His older sister, Sarah, giggled.  She stood at the sink, washing fruit with her back to him, but his mother shot her a glance.  “Quiet girl.  I have seen too many boys who believed they were men.”
    “Is it true the Ambassador is coming today?”  He had overheard his father and the other former ministers speak of it after the previous meeting: that Mr. Madison would travel from Washington to listen to them.
    “Go.”  She slapped him on the rump (he was thirteen, too old for that!) and pushed him toward the door of the apartment. 
    “Get your coat on.  And stay away from that Laurent.”
                                                #
    Bounding down the stairs, he passed through the entrance way and its walls of crumbling, water stained plaster, and out into the commons of the Dobbins Community Apartments.  A few people strolled along the uneven sidewalks, but the cold kept most indoors, the frigid January temperatures of New Jersey unpalatable for the West Africans that made up the majority of the residents.
    The complex consisted of three massive U-shaped brick buildings aligned next to one another, each one opening to the west toward the Philadelphia skyline.  He trotted off in that direction, toward the river, before veering south and on to the big bridge, where his friends usually congregated.  Islands of ice drifted down the Delaware River to his right, and he shivered at the thought of the frigid water.  On Christmas Eve, Laurent and a few of the older boys had lured him to the bank beneath the bridge.  “Come, Sammy, look at the dead body.  I think it is une enfant.  A little girl.”  He neared the edge and leaned out, one arm on Laurent to steady himself.  Peering down, he saw the outline of a white doll, eyeless, jutting from the mud just beneath the surface.  “That is not a girl.  It’s only a stupid-” His head jerked from the force of the violent shove to the small of his back, and he reached out for balance, his arms sinking into the water to the shoulder before his hands found the silt of the bottom.  Laurent, laughing, pulled him up by the back loop of his jeans.  Samuel’s feet and arms were the only parts of him that had gotten wet, but the intense cold accelerate through the rest of his body and he began to shake.  The otherd laughed harder at the sight of his chattering teeth.
   
    He smelled the boys before he saw them.  The sticky aroma of marijuana smoke filled his nostrils as he stepped onto the garbage-lined path that split the tall grass and led to the hollow below.  Samuel continued on, slowing as he neared, trying to distinguish the voices.  Other boys, Americans, knew of this spot as well, and many did not like Africans at all.
    “Laurent?” he called, still far enough to make an escape if the response were not friendly.
    “Samuel?  Is that you?”
    He broke through the last of the weeds and past the rusted box of a refrigerator.  Laurent met him and clasped his hand, snapping his fingers as he pulled it away, in the Liberian way that Samuel had taught him.  “Don’t call me that here, comprendez?” he whispered. 
    Two boys, Americans, stood behind Laurent, passing a joint, both wearing olive green parkas with fur-lined hoods.  Samuel recognized the taller of the two as DaJuan, a high school friend of Laurent, but the other he did not know. 
    “What the fuck, Copperhead?  Why you hang out with that punk ass kid?”  DaJuan scratched his neck.  He always did this around new people, Samuel noticed, to draw attention to the tattoo of a bounding jackrabbit that stretched from his shoulder to the lobe of his right ear.
    “Shut up, DeJuan,” Laurent said.  “He is my brother.  My people.  He is Krahn.  Right Sammy?”  The Krahn ethnic group stretched across borders, from eastern Liberia into francophone Ivory Coast.  He offered his hand again, and the Samuel took it.     
    Laurent “Copperhead” Biai was three years older than Samuel, but had only been in the States since the previous spring.  He had fled his own civil war in the Ivory Coast, but unlike Samuel who had been only seven when his family had boarded their flight out of Monrovia, Laurent had been an active participant in the fighting.  His right pinkie had been severed at its base by a machete, and above his left temple, he bore a small, arrow shaped scar from which a bullet fragment had been removed.  Laurent kept the piece of jagged copper metal in a plastic coin purse he carried with him at all times.  When he had first arrived in Camden and had shown it to DaJuan and some of the other American boys, they had laughed (many bore worse scars) and derogatorily given him the name Copperhead.  Laurent had hated the name, confronting anyone who called him by it for several weeks, until Samuel explained to him that ‘copperhead’ was also the name of a poisonous snake in this country.  “I like this, Sammy,” he had said, smiling.  From then on he took to his new moniker, to the point of even dying his hair a coppery orange, though from the photos that Samuel had seen, the snakes were more a mottled brown in color.
    DaJuan clucked.  “What the fuck is a Crayon?”  He slapped hands with the other boy.  Laurent glared.  DaJuan pulled the hood of the parka tight around his face and turned toward the other boy. “You ask me, too many Af-ri-cans around here anyways.”
    Laurent’s arm flashed past Samuel’s ear.  He had been watching the two boys and hadn’t noticed Laurent pick up the plum sized rock.  It missed DaJuan and caught the smaller boy square on the kneecap with a dull crack.  The boy dropped to the ground, howling.
    “What the fuck did you do that for?”  DaJuan helped the boy up, watching with fear as Laurent searched the ground for another stone.  He placed his arm beneath the boy’s shoulders and began to drag him up the path, through the weeds.  The younger boy cried out in pain as the second throw caught him between the shoulder blades, the parka not thick enough to protect him from the force of Laurent’s throw.
    “I’m gonna kill you, Copperhead!” DaJuan called as they disappeared above us out on to the road.
    Laurent’s face remained impassive.  Samuel, still stunned, watched as he walked over to where the boys had been standing.  He reached down to the ground and picked up the still burning joint that they had dropped, and brought it back over, offering it to him.  Samuel declined and Laurent placed it between his lips and sucked deeply.
    “Action.  These American black boys, they talk, talk, talk.  Remember, Sammy, always take action,” he said, as if speaking about peeling an orange.  “Because, eventually, they will come after you, so you must do it first.”
    “But Laurent, they were your friends.”
    He broke into a menacing grin and dropped the joint to the ground.  “We were, but friends change.  They become enemies.  You, me, we are blood.  We Krahn.  That never changes.”  And they were.
    “DaJuan’s older brother is a bad guy. They will come after.  They will kill you, Laurent,” Samuel said.
    He shrugged and placed a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder.  “So.  Who cares?  I will come back in the next life and kill them,” he laughed.  “Come, let’s get something to eat.”
    Samuel followed him up through the brush and out on to the frontage road and back toward their neighborhood.  DaJuan and the other boy were gone, but Samuel walked behind Laurent in a line in case they were ambushed.  His friend towered a good two feet over him, with shoulders twice as wide.
    “You know, Sammie, once I knocked out a French Soldier with a rock smaller than the one I threw there.  Hit him right between the eyes.”
    Samuel looked off to his left and across the river at the near abandoned shipyard on the Pennsylvania side, the rusting hulks of three mothballed navy destroyers guarding the entrance. The sight always soothed him, bringing back one of the few pleasant memories of his days in Liberia; memories of United States warships, bobbing on the horizon as his family finally made there way to the docks in Monrovia.  The display was awesome, especially for a six year old from the interior who had never even seen the ocean, but this was not his sharpest recollection, or the image from which he drew his comfort.  Rather it was the memory of his father’s face, and the manic grin that he wore realizing that his family may indeed survive.
    And yet, faces were also the source of his darkest memories as well.  His mother and father had hidden the worst of the war, concealing him in tiny, lightless rooms, and when desperate, the even darker deep bush.  Once he had even spent two days in an empty rice sack stacked among several other ‘rice children’ in a muddied hole.  But in the end, though they shielded him from the violence itself, its aftermath was everywhere.  The faces of the dead lined the roads and riverbanks as they made their way west to the ocean and on to New Jersey.
    Laurent glided along silently in front of him, his hands buried in the pockets of the second-hand wool pea coat he wore.  Were his memories of his war similar to Samuel’s own?  Laurent would often speak in broad terms of events, like the French soldier he mentioned earlier, but the stories never expanded into detail, and were left at simple one or two sentence declarations.  Laurent had been shot.  This was true.  This alone made his experience more indelible than Samuel’s own, but Samuel suspected that more than a scrap of copper had torn through Laurent, and whatever it was had not healed and may never.
    They came to the corner bodega at Tenth Street just across form the apartments.  Samuel followed Laurent inside.
    “You want candy bar, Sammie?”  Laurent placed a bag of chips and a coke on the counter.
    Samuel nodded and grabbed a Snickers.  The clerk, a boy Laurent’s age, watched them closely.  A well-masticated toothpick hung from the corner of his mouth.
    Outside, the wind had picked up, dropping the temperature further.  “What you want to do now, Little Sammie?”  Laurent said, and took a swig of the coke.
    “I should back.  The meeting should be almost over.”
    Laurent laughed.  “Meetings.  What do they talk about in all those meetings? Your Papa, he think he going to be big man in your country again?”
    “I don’t know.  Maybe.”  Samuel’s father had been a finance minister for President Doe’s government, before the war.
    “And now your new president.  The femme.  Your Papa and his friends think she is going to welcome them back, make them big men again?”
    “I guess so.”
    Laurent laughed louder.  He crumpled the empty chip bag, tossing it toward the curb before starting off down the street.
    “I see you later, Little Sammy,” he called back.  “You tell your Papa and his friends to keep talking.  Talk, talk, talk.”
                                                        #
    Heavy footsteps creaked upon the stairs as Sammy entered his building.  The meeting had just ended, and a line of serious men clad in drab gray coats filed by, nodding to him as they passed. 
    “Hello, Samuel.  It is good to see you,” the last man said.  Samuel recognized him, but could not recall his name.  The man sighed heavily.  “We need more young men like you,” he said.
    Samuel was unsure if he meant of his quality or young men in general, but thanked him anyway, and held the door as he passed through the entranceway and out into the commons.  He turned and started toward the staircase, when a hand clamped down upon the back of his neck.
    “Where you goin’, motherfucker?”
    The hand slipped around to the front of his neck and pressed him flat against the wall.
    “Is this him?”
    DaJuan and the smaller boy from earlier stood in the doorway.  “Yea, that’s him,” the boy said.
    DaJuan’s brother tightened his grip around his throat.  Samuel winced.  His Adam’s apple felt like it may pop out between his attackers’ fingers.
    “Where the fuck is Copperhead, boy?”
    Samuel shook his head.  His eyes bulged and began to tear.
    “Let him go, Shaun, he didn’t do nothing.  It was the other motherfucker,”      DaJuan said.  Through blurred vision, Samuel detected a hint of sympathy.
    “You see that Frenchy fucker, you tell him I want to talk to him.”  Shaun released his grip, and Samuel dropped to his knees, gagging.
    Samuel gathered himself, and looked up, still in a crouch.  The three boys had gone, but he could hear them shouting ‘Copperhead’ out in the commons.
    “What’s going on down there, Samuel?” 
    He looked up to the first landing and saw his mother.
    “Nothing.”
    “Get up here.  Your father wants to speak with you.”
    Samuel bounded up the stairs and passed his mother, burying his chin into his chest so she would not see the fast purpling marks he was sure were forming on his neck.
    Small plates of partially eaten fruit littered the side tables and chairs that formed a circle in the living room.  Darting through, he made his way for the hall bathroom to check the damage done by DaJuan’s brother.
    “Samuel, is that you?”
    “Yes, Papa.”
    “Come back here.  I need to speak with you.”
    He pulled his collar tight about his neck and made his way down the hall toward his parent’s bedroom.  His father sat upon the edge of the bed while his sister, Sarah, stood cross-armed, leaning against the near wall.  Her eyes were red from crying.
    Samuel stopped in the doorway, but his mother came up behind him and placed her hands upon his shoulders and guided him into the room.
    “Your mother and I have been speaking to your sister about our future.”  His father looked down at his hands as he spoke.  “We have decided to return to Liberia.”
    “We?  I don’t remember deciding that, Papa,” Sarah spat.
    “You don’t know girl.  This is for your own good.  We have a place there.  A future.”  He did not raise his eyes to meet hers. 
    “Who has a future, Papa?  You and your friends, you write your official letters and send them off.  To the United Nations.  To the State Department, here.  To Monrovia.  But does anyone respond to you?  Does anyone even read them?”
    “That is enough, child,” his mother chided, but she looked at his father as she spoke.
    “I am not a child.  I am eighteen, and I am staying here.  There is nothing for me there.”
    His mother’s voice dropped lower.  “Maybe we can stay till Sarah, finishes school.  And then go.  Then she could-“
    “Quiet woman.  The decision has been made.”  His father looked over at him.  “Samuel, you want to go home, don’t you?”
    Samuel shrugged.
    “What happened to your neck, boy?”  His father reached over and lifted his chin.  The bruises must have been prominent from the expression Samuel found on his face.  Before he could respond, his sister spoke.
    “Papa, please don’t make me go.”  Her eyes moistened again.
    “Sarah, come with me.  Let the men talk,” his mother said.  She placed an arm around her daughter’s shoulder and guided her from the room.
    His father slid to the end of the bed, and patted the mattress.  Samuel sat down.
    “Who did this to you, Samuel?”
    “It is nothing, Papa.  We were just fooling around.”
    “Who?  You and Laurent?”  he said, but the anger had drained from his voice, his mind drifting elsewhere.
    “No.  Some other boys.  We were playing American football.”
    “Never mind that now.”  His father stood and faced away from him, toward the wall.  “It is important that as the men in our family, we stand together.  Your sister does not understand.”  He sighed deeply, and turned to face him.
    “You know, your father was once a very important man.”
    “I know, Papa.”
    “Now, look at me, a clerk in a flower shop, spending my days sweeping dead leaves.”  He sat on the edge of the bed again and placed a hand upon Samuel’s knee.
    “This place, it is not for us, Samuel.  It is so…so complicated.  A man cannot control things that are so complicated.  That is very dangerous.  He cannot protect what is important.  You understand me, boy?”
    “I think so, Papa.”  But he did not. 
    “You want to go home then?”
    “But this is our home now, Papa,” he said.
    “Samuel, you are not listening,” his Father said, his voice rising in frustration.  “It is foolish to…”
    “That is enough for now.”  His mother stood in the doorway.  “Samuel, go outside for awhile.  I want to speak to your father.” 
    He rose from the bed and made his way to the apartment door as his parents began to ague behind them.
    “Your friend was looking for you.”  Sarah sat at the kitchen table, a bowl of fruit leftover from the meeting in front of her.  “Copperhead.  He is probably still out in the commons.  Mom wouldn’t let him inside.”
Samuel turned the knob and opened the door.
    “I don’t like that name, Copperhead.  Laurent is such a beautiful name.  I don’t know why anyone would want to change it.”  Her words were soft and light, as if she were merely thinking aloud.
    “He didn’t change it.  It was given to him.  He had no choice,” he said and closed the door behind him.
                                                        #
    “Damn, he got you pretty good.”  Laurent laughed, inspecting the welts upon Samuel’s neck.
    “It doesn’t hurt.”
Laurent’s face turned serious.  “Doesn’t matter.  He has taken away your honor.  It is an insult, no?”
    “I guess.”
    The smile returned to his face.  “Come with me, Sammie, I have surprise.”  Laurent started off at a trot down the sidewalk and out of the apartment complex with Samuel following a few yards behind.  They headed south to the river and toward the path they had traveled earlier that day. 
    “Are we going to the bridge?”  Samuel called out, still running, but Laurent did not reply.
    “What if DaJuan and his brother are there?”
Laurent stopped at the edge of the road where the break in the weeds was located.  “Good,” he said, and pulled something from the waist of his jeans that even in the early dusk, Samuel saw glinted of metal.
    “Come, Sammie.  It will be dark soon,” he said and disappeared down the hill.
Samuel stared at the spot where his friend just stood and just over the top of the tall grass, he could see the river.  The greenish brown water rolled on, relentless and cold, the surface sparkling like scales in the fading light.