The First Emperor of Carver Paradise, Mississippi

As soon as Bo-Peep sat on his stoop, Ms. Juridene came outside and sat on her porch. Bo-Peep nodded to her and said, “You on the porch?” Translated, it meant Are you staying on the porch for a while or going somewhere? If Ms. Juridene was going to stay on her porch, he’d walk across the street to her house and sit on her bottom step to listen to her recap The Young and the Restless.

“You going up-front?” Ms. Juridene called back. She had her cordless phone in one hand and pulled out a worn church fan from somewhere and fanned herself.

“Bo-Peep! You heard me? You going up-front?” Translated, that meant Will you walk to T.T.’s store and get me some cigarettes? She’d give him two dollars for walking the two miles. That was as much as he could expect. People took advantage of him because of his addiction to crack cocaine.

“No ma’am,” he said. He tried to sound confident, but when he said it, his voice cracked.

She stared straight at him and mumbled lazy ass. Though she was wrong, he didn’t argue the point. One thing he didn’t do out of all the things he would do was disrespect the elderly. For all the things he’d let go, nobody could say he didn’t have manners. Ms. Juridene was old enough to be his mother. Maybe grandmother, considering how fast girls were these days. He didn’t want to think about that because he had a thirteen-year-old daughter of his own.

Bo-Peep decided he wouldn’t cross over to her house. He shifted to his bottom step and steadied his breathing, hoping that he could keep “the edge” from creeping up on him. He had gone two days now without hitting the pipe. If he could make it three, he’d be getting somewhere in his self-imposed rehabilitation. His strategy was to stay away from money, jewelry, electronics, furniture, appliances, automobiles, lawnmowers, hot food, non-perishable food items, tools of any kind, cutlery, clothes, shoes with good soles, decent hair weaves, copper pipes, and puppies—all of which he had sold to score crack cocaine.

What brought about this desire to free himself of the drug was a prediction his mother had made before she had died two years ago.

“When you get tired, you’ll quit.” Bo-Peep was tired, and he had quit—for two days going on three. If he made it a week, he’d go see his daughter over in Gulfport. And then he’d see about getting a job. Maybe he’d even go back to church. Bo-Peep was dreaming big, he knew, but then he was on his third day.

Mr. Pete, from one house over, was trying to start his lawnmower. But the starter was choking. Bo-Peep could fix it, but he knew Mr. Pete wouldn’t dare let him come near the mower after he had stolen his riding John Deere two months before. The old man had purchased a used push mower from Sylvester’s Salvage and had no business walking behind a second-hand mower at his age. Bo-Peep had it in mind to buy Mr. Pete a spanking brand new riding lawnmower when he got his life together.

Mr. Pete got the mower to roar into action. Bo-Peep listened to it buzz across the yard and found himself liking the sound. It wasn’t a radio—he had long traded his for a twenty-rock—but it would do.

In his seven years of being a drug addict, he entertained the thought of quitting many times and made a successful eight-month stint. What hurt him was that he got lucky. He had purchased a scratch-off ticket (The Buck Stops Here!) and found himself the winner of three-hundred dollars. Instead of giving the money to his sister, he ended up celebrating behind the old Baldree Store with Linwood the drunk and Baker, Carver Paradise’s other crack...