The Colours of August MxM (Staten Krown)

2

 Stevey

"What the hell done happened to ya'll?" Sissy voice echoes through the screen door as we get to her house.

Sissy's voice echoes through the house. My sister's birth name wasn't Cecilia. It was Agnes. Down in the south we usually called the oldest sister Sissy. My younger sister Lena had gone off to live in the North. She'd gone off to some good school or something of the sort. Sissy stayed around. She stayed around to take care of me after Mama died.

"Close the door," I state, "Goddam it, Beau, close the goddam door!"

We fall into the living room. All four of us tired. All four of us drained. All four of us are scared for our goddam lives.

"Is that the four muskateers?" Sissy asks.

Sissy walks into the common area with a smile on her face. Her cheeks are red and her eyes are big. Everyday Sissy looks more and more like Mama. Mama was slim even in her last days. Sissy had her physique. She was tall, slim and drop dead gorgeous. Every suitor from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa had come trying to get to Sissy and she was never having it. She gives them her warm friendly smile and deny them in the most lady-like way ever.

It's the same smile that she has when I see her walk into the room. Her smile fades when she sees us breathless and collapsed on the floor.

"We're in trouble, Sissy," I tell my sister.

She'd never seen us like this. She'd never seen me like this. I watch how she studies my face. She walks over to the door, locks the door for us and crosses her arms.

"Start from the beginning."

Four friends. My sister Lena named us the four musketeers: Shug, Little Lonny, Beau and me. Lena was bougie and loved to read books. No one knew who the hell the goddam Musketeers were but the name stuck somehow from her cracker books. She used to pretend she was white or something, I guess. The problem with the four musketeers though was they were three white boys. We weren't white.

And that one rule had been forgotten tonight.

"Stevey went outside to smoke," Shug states, "I know I should have left when he said. I should have goddam listened."

"That white girl was trouble," Little Lonny adds, "She was trouble walking in there."

Shug could have any girl he wanted. Him and his cousin Beau were two of the most handsome negro men in Birmingham and everyone knew it. The girls went crazy for them. Shug had fallen for my sister Lena. They were engaged at one point and everything. Something happened...I was never sure what. All I know is that Lena left and moved up north. Shug never settled down again. It's times like this that I wish he had fallen.

"A white girl?"

"Carol Millwood," I tell my sister.

"Color Chasing Carol?"

We all knew the story. Carol Millwood had a reputation amongst us the colored boys living in the city. It's been told she'd spread her legs for every negro with a dick bigger than 7 inches no matter what they looked like. I had seen Beau and Shug's dick. They definitely exceeded her requirement if it was true. Then there was Little Lonny. He still had the baby face. He has these tears in his eyes at that moment. I can tell this all freaking him out.

"She wanted it," Shug states.

Shug is panicking. I can tell he was. He always has been. His face is flushed. Him and Beau both stood at 6'4". They weren't just tall. They were big. They had muscles from working the field and they knew it. Their hands were coarse but their faces maintained this neat, perfect juxtaposition. Their skin was dark brown. Both of them were like heated chocolate candy bars melted over a muscular frame. Big lips, nappy hair, large hands and all these unapologetic negro features that got every girl's panties wet save Sissy who seemed to lack sexuality at all. Their looks were the only thing they had in common. Where as Shug was struggling with all of this, Beau sits quietly on Sissy's couch. He hasn't moved.