Written while listening to Wongraven—Fjelltronen, available at the link below and via the window at the bottom of the page:

It was cold in the house, the icy winter air whistling in through the trash bags taped to the window frame above him. His bed was pretty warm though, with only his face getting cold from where it peeked out from underneath the knit hat and the vast pile of clothes he had burrowed under.

It was barely light and something was scratching at the window, and something else was dropping on his chin—crumbs?

Traymore looked up in the early morning half-light and saw Jesse, the Boss rat, the one that wasn’t afraid, eating a Pop Tart from a perch on the old coat he was nestled under, right over where his hands were tucked on his chest. Jesse was looking right into his eyes—a rat the size of the cats they used to have, before the cats was driven out by the rats.

Jesse, named after Jesse James, because he was a damned near white city rat, simply looked into Traymore’s eyes as he nibbled on the Pop Tart. Traymore did not like to be awoked before noon, and was right mad, exclaiming as he flicked at Jesse’s feet from beneath the coat, “Get the fuck off, Jesse!” to which the rat bounded away over the pile of old clothes that was the bed for Traymore and his two dumbass brothers.

Traymore kicked out under the heaped clothes and caught Trayvon in the ribs.

“Ouch, Yo,” came the muffled protest.

“Trayvon, you dumbass, lead-eaten muvafuca, Yo cain’t be eatin in bed. It encourages Jesse. Before you know it he’ll have the whole James Gang up in here eatin' our frozen asses in our sleep!”

Trayvon simply curled deeper into the abyss of old clothes and new donated clothes that filled half of this room and made for a cozy bed. Then Traysereus barked, “Yo, you interrupted a good dream, Nigga!” and konked Traymore on the head with one of the boots they had stole from Trinity’s man’s car while he was up in her bedroom making time.

The three brothers were now good and awake and began getting their shit together for the day. Traymore’s warning that Jesse and the James Gang might soon be driving them out, like they had them Siamese Bitchez, had struck a note in their minds and they all started pulling together. The first order of business was selecting what parts of the bed should form Trayvon’s outfit for the day, with Traymore sniffing the air to determine the temperature and Traysereus doing most of Trayvon’s dressing. Trayvon was slow, “had the lead” from eating window paint and was not as smart as Traysereus, who was not that smart to begin with. Traymore, though the middle brother at 10 years, was essentially the leader. Traysereus, at twelve, was their lead on the street. Trayvon was just, well, Trayvon—"got-the-lead" Trayvon, which had got Trinity all of her nice shit like the BMW and the pink silk canopy over her bed, and all the weed she smoked and liquor she drank with her mens.

Trayvon was also responsible for Traymystery’s high living: her dresses, weaves, braids, her going to private school. So Trinity and their older sister had benefitted greatly from Trayvon’s affliction caused by the evil lead paint made by those white companies that ran the world and kept a nigga down. However, this high standard of living did not reach to the Sons of Trinity Baxter who were charged primarily with looking after one another. Traymore had been looking after Trayvon since he was old enough to remember—five he was when he became the babysitter, cause Traysereus was so busy beatin the mess outta other niggas they age.

So here they was, getting dressed from the donated clothes pile in the crumbledown room at the back of the old house, where the wind swept up from the highway, where the distant white people zoomed their cars to wherever it was they went, from whence ever they came.

All dressed warm now, the three boys walked down the long hall, past the bathroom with the cardboard window, where that crackhead had once crawled into to die on a previous Christmas. This had freaked Trinity out, so she had made Traymore responsible for checking the bathroom and Traysereus responsible for laying the steel pipe he carried into crackhead heads when they came near the house. In a creepy kind of way, the crackheads were beginning to become like the rats, only not as intelligent.

The sons of Trinity Baxter did swagger a bit as they walked down the hall to the game room where Trinity’s man sat smoking weed, drinking a forty, and playing a video game in his gay-looking bathrobe and sweat pants bottoms. Traymore swore that one day he would stuff a sock down this man’s throat while he slept, for the man had struck him once for back-sassing Trinity, who needed some back-sassing on occasion on account of her being a stupid bitch.

The scent of the 'stupid smoke,' as he called what all adults seemed to be addicted to in their dumbass way, assaulted his senses, made Trayvon sneeze, and made Traysereus start to nod. He knew that one day he would have to deal with Traysereus getting hooked on weed and often wondered what he would do about that.

Trinity’s man looked at them and said, “What up, lille Gs.”

Traymore wasn’t in the mood for this shit after being awoked by Jesse James, so he snapped back, “Fuck you, niցցer.”

The man got up and came heavy stalking toward Traymore, who stood his ground with his hand on his razor deep in the pocket of his Washington Redskins starter jacket. The man hovered over him menacingly, dropping the controller and making to grab Traymore’s neck between his massive hands and snarled, “Who you callin’ 'nigger,' you little nigglet?”

Traymore stood tall, to the man’s belly button, “You, niցցer.”

The man then took Traymore’s neck between his hands as he had known he would. As he lifted Traymore off the tarpaper floor Traymore slid his razor out and slashed the inside of the man’s wrist to the guitar strings, which caused Trinity Baxter’s latest man to take a knee, whining like a bitch, while he pressed one hand to the other wrist, and Traysereus smacked the side of his big pumpkin head with his galvanic steel pipe, which they had named Galvanic Lightning, their unrustable talisman.

Traymore then took Lilly, his straight razor, and slashed the man’s junk through his sweat pants and the big dude ran crashing out the front door into the middle of the street screaming like bitch. The boys closed the door behind him and divided up his shit, including a plastic baggie with some money and weed in it.

As they stood over the place where the man had camped out on the old, dirty, cigarette-burned couch, Traysereus downing the rest of that warm forty of Steel Reserve malt liquor, they heard Trinity emerge in a loud rage from Traymystery’s room where she usually braided her daughter’s hair, her nightgown flapping around all unseemly and whatnot.

“What are you evil little niggas doin'?—where my mans at!”

They all three looked up at their mother, all looking back at her like indicting ghosts cast up from the hell where their various anonymous fathers surely resided by now.

Trayvon did what he always did when he got in trouble, putting his finger to his enlarged lower lip and rapping, “I got da lead. I got da lead!”

Traysereus, Galvanic Lightning in one hand and a bottle of malt liquor still draining down his throat from the bottle held high in the other hand, just drank his drink until it was drunk dry.

Traymore, having slyly pocketed his razor, as was his method after dealing with these miserable adults, just deadlocked Trinity in the eyes and lied convincingly, “Nigger laid a hand on Trayvon.”

Her fury abated somewhat, Trinity then put her meaty fists to meatier hips and bobbled her head, saying, “Then you niggas need to get Mamma some scrimps, some snow crab clusters and a Christmas cake—which dat nigga was goin’ ta do today, and ain’t ever gonna do now!”

Her finger, tipped with a swirl of exotic hand-painted color, then bent angrily out at the world and she snarled, “Then ya’all get out en don’ come back ‘till you done got that hundred en fitty dolla’s wort a Christmas—go waylay some white people if ya have to—but don’t come back in here unless you mens enough to replace the mans you run off!”

They all three nodded obediently, Trayvon saying, “Get da lead out, get da lead out,” Traysereus belching, and Traymore saying, “Yes, Mamma—we gotchyou.”

So, out into the cold cruel world trekked the three Sons of Trinity Baxter, with but six hours to make enough money to buy Trinity and Traymystery they Christmas Eve dinner.

As they walked down toward Park Heights, Traymore took out the bag of weed, separated it for sale at the liquor mart—which would bring a hundred—and counted out the cash as the two other brothers gathered around.

Traysereus mumbled, “How much da big nigga have?”

“Shit, dat fool bitch Trinity weren’t gettin shit from dis nigga—but sixty-two beans. Dis en da weed gets us our good time. Let’s go get Trinity and Traymystery dey good time.”

Out onto Park Heights they walked, the Sons of Trinity Baxter, at war with an old, cold world.