Munez Lautner knew not a damn thing about Shadding Lyttle, and he liked it that way.

You can ask how a fella that knows nothin about another fella can like it that he don’t know nothin about that fella.  An I’ll tell ya the answer, an all you got to do is sit an wait for the story to catch up to your curiosity is all. 

So, Munez didn’t know a damn thing about Shad, and liked it that way.  An truth be told, Shad didn’t know a damn thing about Munez, but whether he cared a damn about that state of things I couldn’t tell you.  See, theys situations was different in regard to what they knew of one another.

Mind that of  I just dropped in there. 

Told you Munez didn’t know a thing about Shad, didn’t say he didn’t know of  Shad.  Different points entirely.  Way I tell a story they is anyway.

Take a step back, backer than that, little more backer, kay, now you’re at the time when Munez was a whippet child.  Slink of a gutter snip, zigzaggin crowds around the Square, rubbin his belly an looking out from under curly bangs from outta big brown eyes.  Boy had two singular talents, boy could make them eyes leaky as a hydrant at will. 

Tell you, many’s the traveler made the mistake of glancing down and making eye contact with that child, watched as the valve was opened and the waters flowed down those dirty thin cheeks, felt theys hearts touched, frozen there by pity, reached to they’s back pocket for handbag for a little something for to give the mite that he could buy a hotdog from the cart over there, an found that while they’s better natures were being touched upon, theys wallets had likewise been touched up and gone.  Time they looked back for Munez Lautner, he was gone too, down some stray alley was with his big sister, watchin as she counted out the cash, threw the plastic down a sewer drain, stuffed the bills into the strap of a bra she didn’t even need none, and spilled the silver into his cupped palms.

Yeah she got a name too.  What, you think the Book call her Munez’s Sister?  No.  Her name in the Book of All Future Names is called Petty Affair.  An why they has different last names ain’t because theys mommy married different daddies or somesuch, it because the Book don’t care what your brother or sister or mommy or daddy or grands or great grands be called, the Book has your  name, for just you, got no relation to whosoever’s womb you happen to squirt out of or how you got in there or whether theys people what got together to put you in there was married or any other nonsense the Book don’t give a damn about.

So there.

Munez Lautner and Petty Affair.  Brother and sis.  Tight as tight.  How tight they be, you ask, if she be pocketing all the foldin money an givin him only the jinglin? 

Tell you: for ones, she the dipper.  He the shill, keep the attention of the suckers while she stick her hand in theys money keepin places, but she the one taken the rap if a blue suit show up at the wrong occasion of time.  For seconds, she not hoggin that cash.  That cash, sure she take some for herself, but somthin nice, a scarf like she like to wear over her head, wrap up those waist long dreads and keep them manageable while she work, she got dozens of those, master at tyin knots and makin ropes an other usful stuff from them scarves, but mostly what she do with that cash is pay rents on theys place to live, buy groceries for theys to eat, an books from the three-for-a-dollar bin for Munez to read on cuz he way ahead of himself with that readin an go through books like nobody you seen.

That was the other singular talent of Munez (singular, by the by, means theys only one of them.  Don’t give me no mess about how can the boy have TWO singular talents. I mean by singular is that no one else have them, they all his alone.  So there.), readin.

Boy could read a storm. 

Mean that literally (literally mean I mean it exactly how I say it an it ain’t no figure of speech meant to illustrate a point.  If you follow).

Mean that boy was so proficient (proficient mean someone really, really good at something) in the art of readin that he could read a storm.  Look up through the rain, up at the clouds, cracklin lightnin, rollin thunder, whippin wind, look it all over an read it in a flash.  Tell you if it a cleansin kind of a rain, a ill wind, tell you where the thunder from, if it Chinese or from Zaire, know if the clouds the silver linin type, or the other, read everythin in a storm. 

That not all.

Munez Lautner, he could read the street.  Read the buildings.  Read your face.  Read dirt.  Read pigeons on the wing.  Read the grease on a diner countertop.  Read clothes line.  Read shoe soles and bald spots and coffee cups and chocolate cake.  Boy could read anyolthin.

Over the years, as he growin, he read the city, an it tell him of Shadding Lyttle, but it don’t tell him anythin about Shad.

Just tell him such a boy exist, that an no more.  Well, it tell him one more things of Shadding Lyttle.  It tell him that he gonna kill him someday.

Sorry, what I mean is, he (Shadding Lyttle) gonna kill him (Munez Lautner) someday.  Tell you, that a hell of a thing to read about yourself and some other fella you ain’t never met nohow.  Remember back when I talked about foreshadows?  It like that, when you read about somethin that’s to come to pass but ain’t yet, but it better to call it a portent, like a sign of what’s to come.

Having read that much of Shadding Lyttle, Munez didn’t want to know nothin about him.  The less there was in the city to read about Shad, the further than person, whoever he be, must be away from him and his sister.

Still and somehow, Munez ended up in Shad’s mob.

Thought I’d forgot what I was tellin didn’t you?  No, I didn’t just comin at it kinda sidelike here. 

How is it a fella that knows that some other fella is or might be destined to kill him come to cross paths?  An how it was that it happened was like this:

Munez was readin one day, readin the crowd like he was supposed to, lookin for that person whose moles would read to him a story about how they had some scratch on them and that they was a soft touch for a cryin child at the same time.  Took an awful lot of readin to find that combination.  An truth to tell, by the time of this, Munez was gettin a little largish.  Growin into those big brown eyes.  Cheeks fillin out. 

Petty Affair knew she should make him fast now an again, specially on wokin days, but she loved her brother angry.  Not by which I don’t mean that she loved him when he was angry, but that she loved him with angry love.  Not gentle love, not all-consuming love, not even fierce love, but angry love.  Like to rip up the world if it do wrong by him kind of love.  So she never had it in herself nohow to ask him to skip a meal.  She’d skipped plenty meals in her time.  Three years older than him, she’d skipped means every one of the days of her life.  First because the meals weren’t there, then because they weren’t there and what was there she gave to Munez.  An then, once they was out on theys own, she coulda stopped skippin meals, but it was like her body didn’t know what to do with food.  Just looked at it an said, what that for?  She looked proper ragamuffin.  Pretty as all damn, but boney as hell. 

So Munez takin a long time readin the right mark, an he getting bored, start readin other things.  Readin the exhaust from a cab, readin the cups and gum wrappers in the gutter, readin the statue in the middle of the Square, even though he read it a hundred times before.  Sudden, he read somethin on a man, read a big fat backroll, read a weakness for children.  An he tickle his earlobe the way he supposed to for Petty to know it’s on. 

Problem is, Munez don’t read deep enough.  He just kind of scan this fella, don’t get the who story. 

So when he catch this man’s eye, fire up the tears, get em goin good and strong, an see the smile come over that man’s face, he plain shocked by what he read in that smile.  The nasty things that smile tells him, they make him want to run an hide some other place.  Before he can, an before he can lift the sign tells Petty to slip off otherways, she’s dipped the man’s pocket, an found his hand already there, grabbin her wrist, twistin it, pullin her close, that same smile all over his face.

“Well,” he say, “what a delightful pair of children you are.”

Munez Lautner, he just frozen there, readin the man’s face over an over again, readin his belt an his socks an his toupee, readin the same thing in all of them.

This here man, he knowed Shadding Lyttle.

That how Munez Lautner and his sister Petty Affair come to be indentured to Bobo Link.

And the sadness that followed should come as no surprise when it does.

-c

LOS ANGELES, July 30, 2008

THE BOOK OF ALL FUTURE NAMES