Yaccub's Curse

I read Camus’ The Stranger, The Plague, and The Myth of Sisyphus. I read a play by Sartre called Nausea. I devoured Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund and Siddhartha. I was entranced by Dostoyevski’s Dream of a Ridiculous Man and the novel that had the most impact upon me, The Brothers Karamozov. I had never read anything like these novels. They were full of spite and cynicism, ranting tirades of existential angst. I know now that I wasn’t ready for it. I was overwhelmed and nearly devastated by the revelations these books brought me to. Desperate questions, blasphemies, whose answers only led to more questions. A snowball effect that caused a ricochet in my brain. Questions bouncing back and forth at increasing velocity and force until it felt like my mind would shatter. Why? Why? Why? Why? They turned my whole world upside down.

I read these books feverishly and each one pained me as much as it thrilled me. It was in a chapter of The Brothers Karamozov titled “Rebellion” that I received my most disturbing, and horrifying, enlightening. One of the novel’s main characters, Ivan Karamozov, issued the most powerful indictment of Christianity I had ever heard.

He described in graphic detail the suffering of a little girl who was abused by her parents and forced to sleep in an outhouse and a little boy who was torn apart by hunting dogs and he asked what kind of divine plan could rest on the suffering of little children? Ivan Karamozov wanted no part of such a plan. No eternal harmony was worth the suffering of innocents and any god who would allow such a thing was unjust. It was too high a price. “I prefer to live with my unavenged suffering and my unappeased anger…” he shouted, rather than accept what he deemed to be the “overpriced ticket” to paradise; rather than participate in the cruel plans of an unjust God.

I kept the book in my back pocket and read it over and over again. Not the entire book, just that one chapter, until the pages fell out of it.

I had always believed in the goodness of God even though everything in my experience spoke against it. Every horrible thing I’d witnessed in the hood flew in the face of faith and the idea of a wise and benevolent deity, but still I believed because that’s what I had been taught to do. I hadn’t even been aware that disbelief was an option. But now I knew. There were disbelievers and no lightning bolts had come down from the sky to smite them. I checked. A seed of doubt had been sown and even God’s very existence was now in question. Mrs. Greenblade may not have realized it, but by making me think and question my beliefs, exposing me to those self-tortured European authors and philosophers who seemed to believe in nothing, she might have corrupted me more than anything that had ever happened to me in the streets. Ironically, it was the words of a preacher at my Mom’s church that issued the most tragic wound to my faith.

I had started going to church with my mom and Grandmom after the incident in the lot. I can’t say I was making any heroic efforts to obey the commandments, not if it meant turning my back on my boys, but I was trying to make amends for the things I’d done and would do in the future through prayer.

I was wearing my best suit; soft gray, double-breasted, pinstriped, with a black tie and handkerchief. Over my mother’s objections I wore a small platinum crucifix in my left ear. We didn’t have a car at the time so we walked the seven and a half blocks to the massive two hundred year-old Baptist church. We lumbered along at a snail’s pace due to the premature arthritis in Grandma’s knees.

Grandma wore a huge purple hat with a big white bow that matched her purple and white dress. Mom was dressed in a form fitting blue dress that came all the way up to her neck, with an open back that went almost down to her ass. She had a black shawl wrapped around her to make her party dress look more respectable, but that didn’t save her from getting dirty looks from Grandma. Her head was adorned with a blue pillbox hat that matched her dress and she wore black heels and carried a matching black purse. As always, she was the prettiest one in the congregation and stood out both because of her impressive height and beauty and her dress which just barely escaped being scandalous. Jealous whispers and envious eyes trailed us to our seats.

We had sat through three songs, two sermons, and one selection from Hebrews:11 when the choir began to hum softly a tune I recognized: “Jesus Is Calling My Name.” Reverend Thoroughgood told us all to turn to Chapter 42 of The Book of Job. This was the passage in which God rewards Job with “…Fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses…” and also, “seven sons and three daughters.” He then blesses Job with a long life of a hundred and forty years so he could see, “…his sons, and his son’s sons, even four generations…” All this after Job had refused to curse God even after God had smote him with sore boils from head to toe, killed all of his children with a hurricane, and destroyed all his servants, cattle, and wealth in order to win a bet with Satan. The bet was that Job would still praise his name no matter what cruel and torturous shit he did to him.

“And even as Job lay humbled, reduced to poverty and illness he still refused to curse God and God rewarded him with twice what he had before.” The reverend intoned in a deep resonant voice followed by a host of “Amens” and “Praise Jesus” from the congregation.

“So, when God tests you, when your electricity or your heat gets turned off cause you can’t afford to pay the bills, that’s when you should praise God the most!”

“Amen!”

“Praise the, Lord!”

“When you lose your job and you can’t afford to put food on the table. When your loved ones are murdered in the streets or fall prey to drugs or alcohol or crime, when your health is failing, that’s when you need to give thanks!”

“Yes, Lord!”

“Praise his name!”

“When you are victimized and abused by your fellow man. Give him praise!”

“Praise, Jesus!”

“Thank you, Lord!”

It was madness, all of it, complete and absolute insanity. I wanted to jump up out of my seat and scream.

“What the fuck are you people talking about? Give thanks to the bastard that caused all this pain? To some fuckin’ god that doesn’t lift a finger to stop our hardship, tragedy, and disaster in the hopes that he will make it all better eventually? And so what if he does cure your ailments after you‘ve suffered for motherfuckin’ weeks, months, or goddamned years? Couldn’t he have prevented it from ever fuckin’ happening? And when has anyone in the ghetto ever been repaid for their suffering no matter how strong their faith?”

It was lunacy, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

“Just remember in the midst of your suffering that God is merely testing your faith. Once he has seen the truth of your faith and piety, he will set you free. And just as Job was rewarded for his conviction, so shall you receive twice what you had before brothers and sisters. Remember it is all a part of his plan.”

Bullshit! I thought. Fuck his plan!

The whole congregation was on its feet praising God and hanging off the reverend’s every word. Even Mom and Grandmom were waving their hands in the air and shouting for Jesus, but I just sat there boiling in silent rage as Ivan Karamozov’s words echoed in my head.

“It is not worth it. It is too high a price.”

I was enraged that God would put man through such torture merely to test the depths of our love. If God is all knowing then why would he need to test anyone? He would already know who would pass and who would fail. It seemed cruel, capricious, self-centered, egotistical. This God that everyone loved so much seemed to possess some of the most fucked-up human qualities. That day I began to question every notion I’d ever had about God. I began to wonder if God really loved us after all.

I couldn’t understand why we gave thanks to the overseer that kept us enslaved. Why we thanked him for the strength to endure the whip. I thought about all the times I’d heard my Grandma say how blessed we were to have food on the table and wondered if we were then damned on the many nights when we went hungry. I wondered if we were blessed on the nights we laid awake listening to the big sewer rats rumbling through the cracked and water-stained walls and ceilings, afraid to let our hands or feet dangle off the side of the bed at night for fear that one of them might gnaw off a finger or toe while we slept. Afraid the entire ceiling might come crashing down on top of us from where the floor joists had warped and rotted from the leaky toilet above that was constantly overflowing. I wondered if we were blessed when we couldn’t find a single piece of food in the cupboard that wasn’t infested with roaches. I wondered if I was blessed all those times I was teased for wearing hand-me-down clothes that barely fit.

I stood up and walked out of the church.

“Malik! Malik! Where the hell are you going? What are you doing?”

“I’m going home. This is all bullshit.”

“What did you say?” my Grandmother cried appalled.

“That preacher doesn’t make any damn sense at all. I’m out of here.”

I left with everyone shouting at my back.

I picked up the Bible that day and began to read it. I tried to forget about all the things people had always told me about God and read it with a completely open mind. I wanted to see what the Bible was really saying and not what others said it was saying. Every word I read shook my faith further. Worst of all was the Bible’s condoning of the institution of slavery.

“…And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger. Genesis 25:23”

I thought of all those white power groups that used the bible to justify their prejudice and was shocked to find that again and again the Bible does just that. It blatantly stated that Christians should make slaves of the heathen races. It was absurd to me that black people, who had suffered these fates, should worship the God that engineered it all. I could not help but to lose some respect for my own race. It was like they were all blind.

Despite all the begging and praying black folks did and all the millions of dollars they dumped into collection plates, God seemed to avoid the ghetto like the plague. Children got killed every day, and every day the pious were drained of wealth yet none of that ever seemed to shake their faith one iota and not once did I see any of them rewarded with a single oxen let alone a thousand. No sheep. No camel. Nothing. Yet still they believed. It was like God had better things to do than to fuck around in the ghetto with a bunch of poor helpless niggas. He was too busy smiling and tap dancing for the white folks who lived in the nice clean neighborhoods with white picket fences and forty-thousand dollar SUVs.

In my mind, God took on the persona of every other criminal and con-man in the ghetto getting fat off the desperate hope and naivety of the under-class. Then again, the way fools were killing each other around the way he might just have been scared to come down there. His messengers and so-called “Servants on Earth” certainly seemed to be. They couldn’t wait to climb back into their big shiny Lincolns and Cadillacs and floor it back to the suburbs once all the offerings were counted and all the sheep pacified. Of course, it might not have been so hostile down in the hood if God had taken more of an interest.

I spent many restless nights after the reverend’s sermon reading what was left of my dog-eared copy of The Brothers Karamozov, trying to relate it to my life. I read the Book of Job and tried to accept it. I wanted my faith back but I just couldn’t accept it. I kept hearing Job’s impossible declaration: “…Though he slayed me yet will I trust him.” How? Why? Why would God persecute someone who loved him so dearly just to prove to Satan how much Job loved him? How could he merely replace all the wealth and children he’d destroyed with twice what he had before and think it excused the senseless suffering he needlessly allowed Job to endure? It seemed so cruel and insensitive to me to kill someone’s children and then say, “Oh, don’t trip. I’ll make sure you have twice as many kids to replace those.” I wondered if that’s what God thought when he saw little Black kids gunned down in the street? But when Black kids were murdered, when our wealth and our health was blown away by the wind, despite our refusal to curse his name, we didn’t get so much as forty acres and a mule.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I cried myself to sleep wondering what we had done to make God hate us so?

I envisioned God as one of those white business men looking down on the ghetto from one of those towering office buildings downtown, aloof and immune, wondering how he can suck more profit from our misery. In my mind God was white and he hated us just like all white folks did.

My Mom started dating this Muslim brother that tried to tell me that God was Black. I laughed in his face at first but he persisted. He said that we were all God’s chosen people descended from the tribe of Shabazz. He was trying to make me feel better, I know. I’m sure my Mom had told him about my little episode at the church and how I had refused to ever go back. But all he did was piss me off even more. If God was Black than why the hell wasn’t he doing anything to help Black people?

I thought about all the bourgie Blacks I knew: the doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and politicians, who talked a good game to gain Black support and achieve their positions and then promptly turned their backs on us once they achieved their desired status. They would put as much distance as they could between themselves and the people who helped to make them what they were. I thought of all the big-time players and pimps, the hustlers and gangstas who leeched off the black community and exploited their own brothers and sisters worse than any white man ever had. If God was Black then he was just another bourgie nigga who got large and forgot where he came from. Somehow the idea of a sell-out, house-nigga god, was worse than the idea of a racist white one.

“But it ain’t God doing all that. It’s that trickster, that blue-eyed devil that Dr. Yaccub created to torment the original man, the Asiatic black man. He’s the one making our lives hell, that white devil”

There was that reference to the white man as the devil again. It seems all these Muslim cats believed that shit. I just couldn’t buy it though. Just like all the other racial conspiracy theories, it gave white people too much credit. I just couldn’t see how they could be that slick and crafty to keep Black people fucked up for so long. All the dirt Scratch was doing in the hood would have been more than enough to convince most mutherfuckers that his ass was Satan. I could definitely believe that he was evil. I just still couldn’t accept that all of them were. Still, even if that shit was true, God created Dr. Yaccub, who created the white man, so it was all God’s fault anyway. Besides, he damned sure wasn’t doing shit to correct the situation.

I stopped believing in God. I was convinced that the lives of Black folks, and mine in particular, was just some cruel-ass joke. I started drinking again and getting high. I had never stopped fighting but even that got worse. More and more often I skipped school. Mrs. Greenblade kept trying to bring me back around but I had lost all interest in school or anything else. It was all pointless anyway.

“What’s going on with you, Malik? You were doing so well. Is everything all right at home? Do you need someone to talk to? You are just too bright and you’ve got too much potential to just throw it all away like this. I might have to fail you if you keep going like this,” the overweight, middle-aged schoolteacher pleaded with me. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.

“Do what you gotta do. Ain’t no thang to me.”

“Malik, please. Just tell me what’s going on?”

“Remember that last book you gave me by Jean Paul Sartre? Being and Nothingness, I think it was. You gave it to me after I told you my thoughts about God and Black folks.”

“Yes?” she seemed relieved that I was opening up. I guess she thought I was giving her a chance to talk me out of whatever I had gotten into my head.

“I gotta confess. I really didn’t understand much of it. But, it seemed to be saying that if there is no God and life is without meaning than there are no rules, no restrictions. That man is as free as he allows himself to be. I think that’s what he meant by the idea of an absurd freedom. If life is absurd then we are free to create meaning, define our own destinies. Anything is possible.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what he meant. I wanted you to see that your race or your economic situation need not hinder you in becoming anything you wanted to be.”

“Yeah, I got that. But if life is without meaning then there may be no restrictions on our actions, but that also means that there ain’t no motivation either. If everything is meaningless then there’s nothing holding us back, but there’s nothing to drive us either and what type of freedom is that shit? It’s like puttin’ a kid in a candy store, but first removing his taste buds. The fact that life is meaningless makes me want to do nothing, but you can’t live doing nothing and everything you do creates conflict, especially in the ’hood. Conflict creates pain, and that pain demands the question ‘What the hell am I suffering for?’ To which Sartre answers, ‘Nothing.’ That’s truly fucked up, man. As much shit as we go through it should mean something. It should be worth more.”

“Malik, you’re wrong. There’s plenty in this world that’s worth doing. That’s just one man’s perspective.”

“But he’s right. Maybe there’s something worthwhile in your world, but not in mine and despite all that bullshit about freedom my world is all I’ll ever know.”

That was pretty much my last day of school. I’m mostly self-educated. I continued to read about philosophy and only succeeded in depressing myself further. No one had anything that was worth believing in. All the philosophers were just cowards and liars, afraid to see the truth or afraid to speak it for fear of being unpopular. No one knew the truth and no one even seemed to be looking for it anymore. I gave up on everything but my friends.

Huey, Tank, and I began going downtown into Center City, to South Street, almost every night to jack white boys for their cash or even their clothes if they looked expensive enough. It was during this time that I got arrested for the first time.

We were down on South Street on a Saturday night feeling roguish and hostile. It was just three nights before Halloween and about ten minutes before midnight. There were already many people out in costume. Early Halloween parties disgorged onto the street and blended in with the gaggle of freaks and weirdos that packed the dozen blocks that led from the harbor to the Broad Street subway. South Street was Philadelphia’s version of Greenwich Village or Haight Ashbury Street. Every nationality, sexual persuasion, and alternative lifestyle the city offered paraded up and down the street in outlandish regalia. From thugs to transvestites, punk rockers to pimps, there was not a single group lacking representation in some form or another. Even the suburbanites from New Jersey and the main line jammed the sidewalks snapping pictures at the urban cultural oddities.

The closer it got to Halloween the weirder South Street became. Between Seventh Street and Front Street cops occupied every corner looking nervous and tense, clearly aware that they were outnumbered and probably outgunned as well. Riots on South Street were almost a Philadelphia tradition. They were so common they hardly even made the news anymore unless someone got killed or something. From Eighth Street to Broad Street however, a short mile that took you within a few blocks of the Martin Luther King projects, there was not a police officer in sight. There the streets were dark with shattered street lights and abandoned tenements. Each alleyway you passed was a potential death trap. And if you were dumb enough to leave South Street anywhere along it’s length, even as far down as Front Street, you were just asking for pain.

The three of us stood outside the pharmacy at Fifth and South watching the hoes, hookers, and naïve young suburban bitches stroll by. The suburban girls were even easier to pick up than the hoodrat hoes. You could almost hear the rap lyrics playing in their heads when they looked at us, wide-eyed and expectant. There was a six-foot red-headed girl grinning at me from inside the store and I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was fucking gorgeous! I knew Huey would have some shit to say about me fucking with some gray bitch, but all I was thinking about was getting my dick wet. Fuck all the politics. It’s all pink on the inside.

My eyes traveled up and down her body and I shook with want. Her breasts were tremendous. I would have put her bra-size somewhere in the middle of the alphabet. Her ass was thick and full, but with as much muscle as fat and her hips were wide as well. Her waist however was small and narrow with just the slightest hint of a tummy.

“Yo, Tank.”

“Wa’sup, dog?”

“See that red-headed snowflake in the store? I bet you I can pull that before the end of the night.”

“Aw, bro, she’s fine. You think you could pull that?”

“Shit, all a Black man needs to pull a white bitch is a big dick and an attitude.”

“Yeah, and a little self hate.” Huey interrupted, scowling in disgust.

“Dog, don’t even start trippin’. Pussy is Pussy. Some just got flatter asses and straighter hair than others, but when you up in it, it all feels the same.”

“How the fuck would you know? You ain’t never been up in nothin’ except Yolanda’s fat ass!”

“Fuck you, man. I gets plenty pussy. Just watch me pull this snowflake bitch.”

Huey was right though. I’d never been with a White girl before and White people still scared me a little. That’s why I liked kickin’ their asses so much. It helped me get over my fear of windin’ up in their freezer like one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s butt buddies. But this bitch was too fine to let a little thing like getting hacked up and stored away as leftovers scare me off.

I strolled into the pharmacy and cut off any reply Huey may have wanted to make. The snowflake looked up as I walked in and smiled. She was definitely about to get fucked.

“You look like you need a thug in your life.” I said, lowering my already husky voice to a deep rumble as I stepped behind her; purposely leaning close enough to her ear so that my hot breath could be felt on her neck.

I knew that what white girls liked most about black men was our overt sexuality and straightforwardness. At least, that’s what I thought it was they liked about us. It might have just been that datin’ niggas was in fashion.

“Oh yeah? And just what makes you think that?”

“Cause here it is midnight on a Saturday night and instead of being made love to by someone who would kill or die for the treasures between your thighs, you here buying Snapple and shit.”

She laughed.

“Yeah, and what could a thug do for me that any man couldn’t?”

She was laying it on the line and since I had been so bold with her so far and it had been working I decided to play it like a pimp the whole way.

“Well, a player like myself would treat you like you need to be treated. Like a queen or a goddess,” and now for the trump card, “…and a whore.”

She stared at me disbelieving for a second like she was trying to decide if I was for real or not; waiting for me to laugh and say I was only kidding, but I stared back into her eyes like I was perfectly serious and then to further emphasize my point, I slowly looked her over from head to toe like I wanted to tear her apart right there in the store. Finally, she smiled and seemed to make up her mind.

“What’s your name, baby”

“Christina.”

“Where do you live?”

“Me and my mom live right across the street above the bookstore.”

Then, as an after-thought she added:

“My mom won’t be home all weekend.”

She was about seventeen years-old and I knew she thought I was the same age. At fourteen years-old I was already six-feet-two inches tall and had a voice like Barry White. I didn’t have much experience with girls though. The closest thing to real sex I’d ever had at that point was with Yolanda. And every time I looked at a White person I still saw Scratch’s face. Even though I didn’t really believe all that Muslim shit about white people being devils they still sort of creeped me out a little. Still, I wanted to fuck this white bitch bad.

“Give me your address. I’m coming over tonight.”

“Damn, you’re fast! How do I know you ain’t some kind of psycho or something?”

“Well, you don’t. But I give my word that you’ll enjoy anything I do to you.”

“You’re a sick mutherfucker. I like you.”

I couldn’t believe it. How dumb could a woman be? A sister would have cussed me out by now and probably pulled a box cutter on me and tried to slash my face. White girls lived in a whole different world. Violence is so foreign to them that they couldn’t even imagine being beaten up or raped by some niggas they met on South Street. Life to them was all fun and games and as much as I wanted to prove her wrong and turn her world upside down, hurting women wasn’t my thing and I wanted some pussy far more than I wanted to prove a point. I had gotten blowjobs and handjobs from Yolanda, but other than that I was still a virgin and was anxious to change that.

“My friends are waitin’ for me. We got some business to take care of. Let me get that number ’fore I leave and we’ll hook up.”

She wrote her number down along with her address and slipped it to me. When I reached for it she held on.

“Are you really gonna call? Don’t take my number if you ain’t gonna call.”

I reached over and grabbed her by the back of the head pulling her closer until our lips met. I slipped my tongue between her lips and found hers coaxing it out of her mouth where I sucked it like an erect nipple then nibbled her bottom lip. Every hair on my body was standing on end. Despite my macho show of confidence this bitch scared the hell out of me. I was almost afraid she was going to try to suck my brains out of my mouth. I was breathing hard and my heart was thundering in my chest when I slipped her number out or her hand and left.

“Hold up! What’s your name?”

I stuck my head back through the door.

“My name’s Malik. My friends call me Snap.”

“Call me. Okay, Snap?”

I didn’t like the way it sounded in her plain, flat, unaccented voice.

“Uh, just call me Malik.”

I slipped out the door and rejoined Tank and Huey on the sidewalk.

“I don’t believe you kissed that devil,” Huey hissed.

“Fool, I’m gettin’ fucked tonight. I don’t give a fuck what your ass got to say about that shit.” I started strolling off toward Sixth Street.

“Fuck is you goin’, Snap? We goin’ to get some pizza.”

“With what money?”

All the money we’d gotten from that incident in the lot had long been spent.

“Fuck buyin’ some pizza. We just gonna jack some white boys for their shit.”

Huey’s greatest joy in life was victimizing the dominant racial group and I knew that it was no coincidence that his craving for pizza happened to coincide with a young white couple leaving LA Pizza and heading down Fifth Street with an extra-large.

“Come on. Let’s swoop on these mutherfuckers,” Tank whispered excitedly before charging across the street.

The couple had just passed Record Exchange on Fifth and I knew there was an alley in the middle of the next block where we could jump them. My heart wasn’t really into it though. I was too busy thinking about getting my first piece of ass.

The guy was as tall as me but heavier. At six-two I was still only a hundred and sixty pounds whereas the white boy was nearly two-hundred pounds. Tank was much heavier than the white boy though, which made me feel more confident. And Huey, who was still just over five feet, was completely dwarfed by the guy. The girl he was with was a tiny frail looking little thing. No ass, no breasts, five feet tall and barely a hundred pounds. She was blonde with spiked hair, tattoos and earrings up and down both ears, wearing saggy old fashioned clothes that didn’t match and obviously came from a thrift store. On her feet she wore combat boots. I never understood why some girls seemed to go out of their way to make themselves look ridiculous.

By the time they reached the corner we were behind them and they knew it, the way a herd of antelope senses when they are being ringed in by hyenas. They started whispering to each other and peeking back at us. We didn’t care if they knew what was going down. There was nothing they could do to stop it.

Tank left our side and started walking in the street just in case they tried to run. The alley was now just a few yards away. As the couple drew closer to the dark gaping maw between the two buildings they grew more and more tense. They knew that this was where it would happen.

From their left, Tank began to close in on them circling around in front of them and Huey took over his former position in the street. I stayed behind them and just as we reached the alley I grabbed the white boy in a bear hug and started dragging him into an alley.

“Hey! Let me go. Da fuck are you doin’ man? Help! Help!”

“Shut the fuck up.” Tank growled and then leveled him with a right hook. The pizza fell to the floor and was trampled as we scuffled.

The white boy was dazed and thankfully silent as we dragged his limp body into the alley. I thought the girl had run off because I hadn’t heard her scream, but then, when I turned to look for her, I caught a face full of pepper-spray.

“Aaaaah! My eyes! The bitch maced me!”

I heard shuffling and cursing and what sounded like blows being thrown. The girl never screamed once as Huey and Tank beat the shit out of her and her boyfriend.

I still couldn’t see as we ran down the street. Huey and Tank were holding my arms and guiding me along as we ran. I could hear doors opening in the houses as we passed. Whenever I tried to open my eyes pain washed over me. My own tears burned my skin as they dripped down my cheeks. My lungs were clogged with the stuff and I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was about to pass out. There was no way I could keep running. I coughed and sneezed and finally I stopped running.

“Come on, man. We got to go!” Tank yelled.

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” My mounting panic was making things worse. It felt like I was trying to inhale flames. My nostrils, throat, and even my lungs burned.

“Shit! We can’t leave you here.”

“Damn straight you can’t!”

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Tank! Can you carry him?”

“For about a block. Maybe two.”

“Well, fuck it. Carry him as far as you can.”

Tank slung me over his shoulder and we ran again. I thought I was going to throw up. After another minute or so my eyesight came back blurry and unfocused and still burning like I was looking into a blast furnace. What I saw wasn’t good.

Three cop cars were speeding up the street toward us. Tank stopped and looked at Huey questioningly. Huey snatched our guns out of our wastebands and ran toward an alley across the street. Huey came back out of the alley just as Tank and I were being thrown across the hood of a police cruiser and cracked across the hamstrings and back of the knees with Billy clubs. If he had just kept walking he probably could have gotten away. Huey didn’t look at all like a thug.

“You with these guys?”

“Yeah.”

“Then your ass is going to jail too.”

“You got any weapons on you?”

“No.”

“Do you know what you’re being arrested for?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any drugs on you?”

“No.”

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen?”

“How old?”

“Fourteen?”

“You’re a bit big for fourteen ain’t you? You play basketball?”

“Don’t all niggas?”

“Well, then you should have kept your black ass on the court instead of fucking around in the street robbing people. Now come on niggers and get your asses in the car! You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…”

I spent the night in jail. My mom refused to come and get me. I spent eight months in Youth Study Center, Philadelphia’s juvenile detention ward, before the trial. I was sentenced to another six months in Youth Study Center plus time served. After that the three of us were sent to Daniel Boone, probably the worst reform school in Philadelphia. Some of Scratch’s boys were there at the same time we were. We joined up with his little gang just to make things easier. Reform schools are as bad or worse than penitentiaries. Kids were beaten, killed, and raped everyday by other kids and guards alike. Every morning I woke up to the smell of burning flesh. Setting fire to someone’s bed was Boone’s favorite way of eliminating an enemy. There were many kids walking around with severe burn scars to match the scars from shanks and shivs. Joining up with Scratch was the safest way to ensure that we would live through the night. Once we were back on the street our relationship with Scratch continued profitably.

“I heard you three little thugs was holdin’ it down for me over at Boone. You in now. You want to stay in then come with me. I got plenty of work if you want it. Ya’ll down?”

He smiled and his gold-plated grille gleamed like the fiery gates of hell. He wanted me to come work for the devil. I thought about all the money we’d made for smokin’ Demetrious’ bitch ass and how nice it was to have all those cool clothes and shit. Fuck it.

“Yeah, we down.”

A chill raced up my spine like a ghost had just crossed my path. I ignored it.

“What do we got to do?”

— | — | —

Chapter 9

“There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”

—Mark Twain, “The White Man’s Notion”

««—»»

Scratch had been around so long that he was as much a part of the Black community as the soul food restaurants, rib joints, swap-meets, and storefront churches. He was as familiar a fixture as the Black Muslims selling bean-pies and Final Call newspapers on Chelten Ave and the junkies, crackheads, and winos chasing the next high up and down Germantown Ave. Like all of us, he was brought here by hard-luck and misfortune and had found a way to overcome it. And, like many of us, he had overcome it at the expense of the rest of the community. He was as much of a curse to black people as poverty, drugs, and AIDS.

I was still in diapers when he and his dad moved to Philly. His father, Stephen Hechtman, was a riches to rags case. Word is that he was a financial advisor on Wall Street when his wife caught him fucking around with this Black call-girl named Nikky who looked like a young Pam Grier, long legs, afro, big tits, coffee complexion and all. Seems he had a thing for the sistas.

Now, I don’t know the whole story, just rumors and shit and what Scratch told me himself whenever he was drunk and in a confessional mood. I’m not sure which version is more reliable. Scratch always had a talent for bullshit. But this is how I think it all happened, how Scratch became Scratch.

His mom caught his dad in their house, in their bed, with his face buried in this black bitch’s ass. She forgave him and they started going to counseling but then she caught his ass again. He’d been calling out sick from work to spend the day smoking crack and fucking that whore in her ass in a loft he’d rented for her in the village. The little trick had fallen in love. He was burning through their savings like it was a fucking holiday, buying his little whore all the drugs, clothes, and jewelry she could want. His wife divorced him while there was still something left for her to get half of. He lost his job soon after that and then he moved to Philly with his whore and his young son. He was now hopelessly addicted to rock cocaine.

He moved them into an apartment in Society Hill and him and his Nubian princess would spend all day and all night partying like rock stars, smoking rocks and fucking like fiends. That only lasted a couple of months before he’d smoked up the last of his savings and they all wound up in the projects. That’s where Stephen Jr. died and Scratch was born,

For Stephen Jr. being the only White kid in the projects meant frequent ass-kickings and long hours of loneliness. He was deathly afraid of the teeming swarms of hostile dark-skinned kids that he suddenly found himself surrounded by. For them, he represented the establishment that had long victimized them. He was their chance to get back at the White man and they took that chance at every opportunity, sending young Stephen home with missing teeth, bloody noses, and fat lips, almost every day. Stephen would sit in his room crying while Stephen Sr. and his Black whore got high in the next room. He would remember the Manhatten apartment he’d grown up in, the exclusive private school, and his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since the divorce. She hadn’t wanted him and had given him away in exchange for the apartment. She had never really been much of a mother. He’d been raised mostly by boarding schools and daycare centers. Still, she’d been nicer to him then Nikky. To her, he was nothing but a nuisance and a drain on money she could have used to buy more crack.

Stephen thought of himself as an angel who had fallen from grace into a hell where savage Black devils waited to rend his flesh to ribbons and abscond with his soul. Each day was a misery and every sight, sound, and smell, was a profanity that mauled his senses and defiled his innocence.

His room was his only oasis. He had put a lock on the door and filled the room with books and comics. He kept a Walkman cassette player hidden under his bed so he could listen to music while he read horror novels. The books, along with most of the tapes, he’d stolen from Woolworths down on Germantown Avenue. No one really paid much attention to the book section. It wasn’t normally a major target of thieves. He would read Stephen King novels, and books by Harlan Ellison, Graham Masterson and then Clive Barker and Jack Ketchum, reading long into the night as dope fiends and crackheads, friends of Nikky and his dad, partied on the other side of the door.

They brought home an old Black and White TV one day that they’d stolen from somewhere and had been unable to sell. It only worked intermittently, but it was better than nothing. Stephen brought it into his room and it, along with the horror novels, and Heavy Metal tapes, became his escape from the hell of the ghetto.

During the night, he clutched his dad’s old .22 rifle to his chest; afraid that one of the dope fiends would break into his room and try to touch him. In the mornings, he crept through the piles of beer cans and liquor bottles, empty fast-food containers and junk-food wrappers, tip-toeing between the listless unconscious forms of his dad’s new friends. He would risk the inevitable beating and steal whatever money was left over from their late night binge then catch the subway to McDonalds at Broad Street and Columbia Ave before making his way to school. They were barely managing to survive off of welfare and so his dad had begun selling small quantities of cocaine to support his habit and keep them all from starving to death and being kicked out on the street. Even though the rent in their little project apartment was only $180 a month, it still had to be paid. Nikky still turned an occasional trick to help out as well.

Stephen was miserable and had stopped speaking to either his dad or Nikky. He just locked himself in his room and watched TV and read and dreamed of making enough money somehow to get back to New York, back his real mother whom he was sure must miss him terribly. In reality, the former Mrs. Liza Hechtman, who was now the current Mrs. Liza Newborn, had never really been cut out for motherhood and being rid of the moody young boy with the long curly blonde hair and piercing blue eyes that she had given birth to, had freed her to pursue her life with her new husband. He too, an artist who was ten years her junior and unemployed, was unsuited and uninterested in parenthood. Once a month she would send a child support check that Nikky and his dad promptly smoked up.

At school, little Stephen was the teacher’s pet. Smart, always eager to answer questions and help other kids, he couldn’t understand why the other children resented him so much.Although he was the only White kid in his neighborhood, at school there were a few other White kids who seemed to fit in just fine. But for him, school would be a hard test for many years until he started slangin’ caine.

Stephen was not a small boy by any means, but he had never been in a fight before attending school in North Philly and he had no idea how to defend himself. He was beaten up frequently but he never backed down, never gave up his lunch money, never let anyone steal his clothes or sneakers. Instead, he would take the ass-whipping. Each blow he received, to him, justified his hatred of Blacks and secretly, he took pleasure in it.

“You talk like a White boy.”

It was lunch time and Stephen was sitting in the cafeteria trying to choke down a peanut butter sandwich when a short, raggedy-looking, black kid with a chipped front tooth, and a patch of shiny crinkled skin on his forehead from where he had suffered a third degree burn, came walking up behind him. The kid had a short Jheri curl that had dried out and turned frizzy. He looked like a pre-adolescent junkie.

“I am White.”

“Yeah, but you sound like Richard Pryor doing an impersonation of a White boy. I didn’t even know people really talked like that. You sound like a little pussy talkin’ like that!”

“Man, just leave me alone.”

“Sound just like a little pussy! What else you got in that lunch bag, little pussy?”

“Boy, you are not getting my lunch.”

“Well, then you’d better give me some money so I can buy a lunch or else you gonna get your ass kicked!”

The idea of this short skinny little kid intimidating the much larger boy would have been laughable if it weren’t for the fact that Steven was white and to most kids in the projects, white boys were considered easy targets.

“Go ahead and kick my ass then!”

Steven stood up and when the boy saw that that Steven was taller than him he started to back off, but pride would not allow it, and once he started punching Steven he found him a willing victim who didn’t even try to fight back. Pretty soon, there was a crowd around the two boys. No one jumped in to break it up. For them, this was a rare and welcome sport. A break from the day’s monotony. Steven fell to the floor and curled into the fetal position. The crowd of spectators seemed to have been waiting for that moment, and moved in to do the North Philly stomp all over his cringing body as soon as he hit the floor. When a teacher’s aide finally intervened, Steven had suffered little more than a bloody nose and a few bruises, having done a successful job at covering himself from the blows, but his ego was grievously wounded. He’d had enough.

“What happened to you, son?”

“I just got my ass kicked! Like you fuckin care!”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I’m your father!”

“When?! When are you ever my father?! When was the last time you were there for me?!”

“Stevie!” His mouth opened but nothing else would come out. He collapsed onto the ragged sofa with a look of defeat.

Stevie went into his bedroom and turned on the T.V. He pulled out the rifle, loaded it, and pointed it out the window. He pretended he was a KKK member in the deep south and he was hunting niggers who had raped innocent little white girls. He took aim at the group of black kids under the street lamp, but only pretended to fire. He imagined explosions of blood; muscle and bone avulsed, penetrated, and pulverized as the bullets tore through vital organs. He felt energized. He had almost forgotten the indiginity he’d suffered at the hands of the battle scarred young black boy, but then when he remembered him and imagined turning the rifle on him and seeing the terror in his eyes, a new and delicious thrill electrified his nervous system. With a gun in his hand, he realized he would never be a victim again.

The next day, Steven stayed home from school. At 3 o’clock he left his house with the .22 rifle under his arm and started to walk to school. At 3:15 p.m., as the kids made their way home from school, Steven walked up, found a spot across the street, got down on one knee, and lined up the sites. A tall gawky girl in pig tails was the first to see him.

“Hey! That kid’s got a gun!” she screamed.

Steven fired and the little boy, Harold Green, age ten, the youngest of eight children, a C+ student, bed wetter, comic book collector, junk food junkie, bully, folded in half, and flew backwards several feet. The high powered projectiles disemboweled the poor kid. He clutched his stomach and tiny pink, blue, and purple loops of intestines unraveled and spilled out between his fingers. Steven Jr. had fired three times, and all three shots had caught little Harold in the gut, eviscerating him. Harold lingered for four days after the five hours of surgery to repair his lacerated entrails. On the fifth day he died of shock brought on by infection. Little Stevie spent less than a day in jail for the crime.

One of his fathers high powered Wall Street lawyer friends made the trip down to Philly, and ripped the asshole out of the young inexperienced prosecutor who was assigned to the case. He paid Steven’s bail, and took him back to the projects. The district attorney’s office decided not to prosecute due to lack of evidence, despite the possession of nearly a dozen signed statements of witnesses who claimed they could positively identify the little white boy as the killer. Charges were dropped and little Stevie Hetchman Jr. went right back to his miserable little life. But things had changed. Mr Hechtman’s Wall Street buddy was appalled to see how low his friend had sunk and offered to lend him a few dollars to get back on his feet. That few dollars was about twenty thousand, and the senior Steven Hechtman, still the financial genius, used that money to launch his own little drug business, and in the projects, business was booming.

Hetchman set up his drug operation out of his own apartment on the eighth floor of Cambridge Plaza in the Richard Allen projects. He paid off the housing authority police to not only look the other way but to guard his stash from thieves and rival dealers.

In the beginning, he used his own son as a mule to deliver the caps (small vials of cocaine) to his dealers and to bring the money back to the apartment. Those ambitious dealers who wanted to buy real weight and go into business for themselves were allowed up to the apartment accompanied by one or more housing cops. They dealt through Nikky. No one ever saw Mr. Hechtman. He stayed in the background, organizing and planning. Negotiating with thugs was not his forte.

Every weekend, the old couple down the hall took the long drive down the coast to Miami where their tires were filled with several kilograms of cocaine. Then they drove their navy blue Buick station wagon with luggage strapped to the roof and tacky tourist trap souveniers littering the back window, back up the coast at exactly five miles above the speed limit. Not slow enough or fast enough to attract attention, looking for all the world like an old retired couple enjoying a long deserved vacation. For their troubles they received five hundred dollars a week and free rent. For his efforts, Steven Hechtman was able to cut out the middle man and buy directly from the Columbians allowing him to make a larger profit than his competitors and still deliver a purer product. He bought his product right off the boat from Columbia. Pretty soon he had dealers on almost every block in North Philadelphia.

The demand for his product grew so large and his orders so huge that the Columbians began travelling to Philly to deal with him directly. This all made Stephen nervous as hell but it helped minimize the risk of transporting the product across state lines.

Two years after their enterprise began, crack cocaine was introduced to our neighborhood and quickly replaced the more expensive white powder. Business quadrupled. Little Stevie Jr. became the head of the dozen or so ten, eleven, and twelve-year-old kids who raced back and forth to the apartment, picking up the rocks when they were finished cooking, and racing them down to the dealers. Their customers often lined up in paranoid, scratching, jittering lines awaiting the arrival of their pharmaceutical paradise. After dropping off the prodoct, the runners would then hightail it back to the apartment to drop off the cash. The dealers were required to turn over all their cash to the runners who would sign for it and issue a sort of coded receipt. Nikky would drive up later in her new, money green Lincoln Towncar to give them their percentage.

Nikky was in charge of the soldiers, the Housing Authority cops and the thugs they had hand picked to act as security and disciplinarians to his legion of dealers. If any of the young slangers were bold enough to take their percentage out before they gave the money to the runners, then punishment was administered swiftly and brutally. Drugs had leached away all of Nikky’s humanity and compassion leaving a vicious, paranoid, sociopath who often miscounted the take and punished innocent dealers.

Little Stevie loved to go along on these trips. Almost every week someone was dumb enough to try to cheat the system and had to be dealt with. Either that or Nikky was just so high that she thought they were cheating. The result was the same. Stevie would wait in the car as one of the soldiers would jump out and break some young kids wrists or hands, or crack a bat across his knees and ribs. When Nikky was in one of her really vicious moods, she’d order one of her soldiers to retire a dealer by taking him into an alley and putting a bullet in his head and then spraying him with the Uzi sub-machine gun, unloading an entire clip into his face and torso and leaving him completely unrecognizable.

Once, Stevie asked if he could be the one to swing the bat but Nikky had refused even though her enforcers seemed amused by the idea. He didn’t bother to ask if he could use the uzi. He knew his day would come.

Stevie took good care of the runners he lorded over. Each and every one of them had brand new BMX bikes, backpacks, and beepers, and he cut them a lot of slack, even when he knew they had stolen a little cash or product as long as they didn’t get too greedy. He would simply threaten to expose them if they did it again and the idea of Nikky and her leg-breakers coming for them usually straightened them out. Then he’d alter a few receipts and make the neccessary excuses to save their asses, further indebting them to him and giving him the power of life or death over them. If they were dumb enough to have gotten strung out then he would let them resign discreetly. Conversely, any runner who disrespected him would find their receipts altered and themselves accused of stealing which often meant a death sentence.

Stevie knew that it wasn’t easy being a runner. They were the hardest working and lowest paid link in the drug chain, except perhaps the drug-addled housewives and retirees that cut the product, and they got blamed for everything. Any time a dealer got caught stealing he would invariably try to blame the lost cash or product on his runner. Stevie was often the only voice they had standing up for them, the only thing between them and Nikky.

The runners took huge risks carrying so much drugs and money through the maze of junkies, crackheads, rival dealers, and crooked nigger-hating cops. Stevie had been robbed at gun point on three separate occasions before his father finally relented and bought him gun. Afterward, Stevie considered equipping all of his runners with guns but decided against it. He had begun taking it into his own hands to retire the more incorrigible thieves and he didn’t think it was wise to even up the odds. Killing the traitors who betrayed his trust and made him look bad in the eyes of the other runners by continuing to steal, had become his secret joy. He never told his father about any of his disciplinary actions. He was afraid that the old man wouldn’t approve. Nikky suspected it, he could tell by the way she looked at him, giving him that knowing wink and satisfied grim whenever a new runner popped up to replace one of the old ones who had suddenly come up missing. As far as they were concerned, the runners were under control so they never questioned his methods. As long as the money kept flowing in, everyone was happy.

Stevie still suffered like mad from loneliness. See, he didn’t really belong here. I mean, he did and he didn’t. He had still thought of himself as an angel trying to survive in hell right up until he ate that kid’s brains. Then he began to think of himself as another devil, the worst of them though, a fuckin’ arch demon, but to everyone else, he was still just a White boy.

He looked to his small crew for friendship. The color of his skin, the flat colorless dialect he spoke in, the plain preppie-looking clothes he wore, the way he walked, swaggering like a gunslinger, all branded him as an outsider. Even the way he thought, his disinterest in girls or sports, fighting or dancing or graffiti, his inability to tell a good dirty joke, the type of music he listened to. He liked his father’s old Doors and Beatles albums instead of Run DMC, Public Enemy or Slick Rick. He didn’t even like Prince or Micheal Jackson. Dispite his ridiculous generosity these differences created a wall between him and the other runners. As long as he was paying the way, everyone would show up but when he just wanted to hang out and play video games he often found himself alone. He grew increasingly resentful as parties were planned without him ever receiving an invite or jokes were told that he wasn’t in on. He was mired in the same filth and sin as them but still he was not one of them. He was alone in the very crowd he had brought together. Often, he thought about that long ago kid who had picked on him for sounding like “Richard Pryor doing and impersonantion of a White boy” and tried to alter his voice, his mannerisms and his inflections to imitate their slang. This too was unsuccessful. He was not very good at it and it sounded as if he was making fun of them. Soon, he stopped giving a fuck. He didn’t care if he was loved as long as they feared him, and they did. They all did.

Killing a runner who had claimed to have been robbed of over six thousand dollars was how Stevie first discovered who he was.

“Ay fool! You! Come here!”

“Yo Stevie. W-what’s up?”

The kid was three inches shorter than Stevie and two years younger. He had three gold teeth in his mouth that hadn’t been there the week before and a thick gold rope around his neck. Stevie looked down at the kids feet, he was wearing a brand new pair of Jordons. Rage turned Stevie’s complexion crimson. He could feel something dark and terrible building within him. It was not an unwelcome sensation.

“Where’d you get that rope?’

“My mom bought it for me.”

“What?”

“My-my mom bought it for me.”

“Is you tryin’a play me? You think I’m a fuckin’ joke?”

“Naw, naw I swear. She did!”

Stevie pulled out the revolver his father had bought him. A .45 caliber Smith and Wesson. He held it at his side as he stepped closer to the kid and stared him in his eyes.

“Your mom’s a fuckin’ crackwhore! She ain’t buyin’ shit but rocks. You stole that money, didn’t you?”

He cocked the hammer.

“Naw, man. I-I ain’t steal nuthin’. You know I wouldn’t do that.”

He put the gun to the kid’s head.

“You about the dumbest mutherfucker I ever met. If you hadn’t tried to flash the cash in my mutherfuckin’ face, buyin’ gold chains and teeth and shit, I might have believed your stupid ass!”

“I swear! I didn’t!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Stevie pulled the trigger.

Scratch has described this to me many times and like I said, I don’t know how much of this shit is true or not, but I don’t think he was lyin’ about this part.

The kid’s head came apart. The bullet entered right above his temple, taking off the top of his skull. The kid fell at his feet and little Stevie just stood there with the gun still in his hands, watching blood and brains flop out of the top of the kid’s ruptured skull. According to Scratch, something about the way the kid’s brains just came sliding out of that big crack in his dome triggered something in him. He knelt down in the kid’s blood, completely transfixed, mesmerized, and he started scooping up handfuls of the kid’s brains and shoving them in his mouth. That’s when he finally knew who he was. That’s how Scratch put it to me. He said, “That’s when I finally knew who I was, how I fit in, what my true destiny was.” I thought he was just full of shit or crazy as fuck. I didn’t get it. I get that shit now though.

— | — | —

Chapter 10

“Show them a little prospect of gain to lure them, then attack and overcome them.”

—Sun Tzu, The Art Of War

“…There’ll be times… when my crimes… will seem almost unforgiveable… I give in… to sin… because I have to make this life livable…”

—Depeche Mode

««—»»

“Hey, fool! Back up off me wit’ that gat! You think that’s some kinda toy? Point the barrel at the floor ’til you ready to shoot that shit!”

“I know what the fuck I’m doin’, dog. Ain’t like this the first time we done rode on a nigga.”

Tank and I had been working for Scratch for almost four years. Dirty work. Wet work. Our job was to get bloody so he didn’t have to. We’d been doing it ever since the summer of our fourteenth birthday when we’d murdered that kid Demetrious for him. Now we were almost adults and we were the most accomplished shooters he had. Because we didn’t give a fuck. Not about ourselves or anyone else.

Four years is a long time for a shooter in the hood. Most didn’t make it six months before someone hollowed out their chest as payback for some loved one sacrificed in the name of business. Huey hadn’t joined Tank and I in our criminal venture. He should have. For a guy who wasn’t getting paid for it, it seemed like he was always poppin’ shots at someone. Usually it was for disrespecting his girl. He’d hooked up with Iesha a few years back and they were about to have a kid together. Still, Huey was always down to back us up if we needed help and we often did. We knew how he felt about us working for a white drug dealer, but he usually kept all that Black militant shit to himself. He’d given up on preaching to us years ago. Now he settled for just saving our asses instead of our souls. I couldn’t count how many times he’d pulled Tank and I out of some shit we’d gotten into while trying to pop some fool Scratch had taken a dislike to for some reason or another.

As Tank and I crept up the stairs of the main tower in the pentagon of dilapidated twelve story tenements that made up the Raymond Rosen projects, all I could think about was how I wished that Huey was there to get my back rather than his idiot brother.

“Just watch that shit.”

“I know what I’m doin’, dog. You just watch yo’ own shit. I ain’t shot yo’ ass yet have I? Give a brotha some credit!”

“This ain’t no joke, Tank. This ain’t no driveby. We up in they buildin’. In their house. On the sixth fuckin’ floor no less! It’s a long way to run if we fuck up and miss and they’ve got home court advantage. They know this place a hell of a lot better than we do.”

“If we fuck up and miss then we ain’t runnin’ nowhere. Them niggas’ll smoke our asses ’fore we hit the stairs. This shit is like cap or be capped you know I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what you sayin’.”

I closed my mouth and turned my attention back to creeping up the graffiti and urine stained stairwell. Tank and I both had our guns out and perspiration was making the grip slippery.

My problem was that I wasn’t like Tank. Tank could get his hat blown off by a bullet that passed half an inch from his skull and then sit back and talk about some trick with a fat ass he’d seen on a rap video as if nothing had happened. I would be shaken for weeks after an event like that. Tank just accepted his fate. He didn’t expect to get out of this shit alive. He knew he’d probably be dead before he was old enough to vote, but as long as he had money, clothes, and hoes while he was alive then he didn’t give a fuck about tomorrow. His life meant nothing to him and no one else’s life meant more to him than his own. Tank was a truly dangerous individual.

“Don’t get all serious now, dog. I was just fuckin’ with you about us not getting’ out of here alive. I mean, you might get capped if you miss, but I’ll be getting my fat ass out of dodge. I may not be built like a sprinter, but I’ll turn into fuckin’ Maurice Green if a motherfucker starts tryin’ to spray my ass with some hot shit.”

Tank laughed, but I found it impossible to share in his humor. My nerves were jangling as if I’d been doused in ice water and plugged into a light socket. As grateful as I was to find that the stairway had no lights in it allowing us to creep up to the sixth floor almost completely unseen in the darkness, the night was starting to feel like another obstacle. I kept wondering what else could be creeping around in the blackness.

I started to speed up, no longer concerned with stealth just anxious to get out of the darkness. Tank trundled along behind me trying to keep up and making even more noise in the attempt. I had to slow down or risk alerting the entire building to our presence. I was sure that these dealers had lookouts and informants on every floor. At least they would if they knew what the fuck they were doing.

“Damn, dog! Slow down. I was just kidding about that Maurice Green shit.”

“Sorry, playa. I just want to get this shit over with.”

“I hear you, bro. I can barely even see you it’s so dark in here.”

Finally we reached the sixth floor and stepped out of the stairwell into the hallway. It was only slightly better lit. Light from the apartments spilled out from beneath the doors, illuminating the floor as we made our way toward our target.

We were almost there.

“How many of these mutherfuckas are up in here anyway?” Tank whispered.

“There should be about five of them up in there.”

“Nigga, you said there was three!”

“Aw, don’t bitch out now.”

“I ain’t bitchin’. You know I don’t give a fuck if there was ten mutherfuckas up in there! They ain’t nothin’ but a paycheck to me.”

Yeah, I knew that, and it was damn frightening. Looking at him then it was hard to believe that I’d kicked his ass when I first met him. Now he was 6’3” 240lbs of blue black muscle and fat. His nappy cornrolls spiraled down from beneath a baseball cap with “Made In The Ghetto” emblazoned across the front of it. Red checkered boxer shorts poked out the top of his black FUBU jeans. Even though I was two inches taller than him Tank was twice as thick. He looked to me at that moment the same as he did when I’d first met him… monstrous and unstoppable.

We were halfway down the hall, just yards away from the apartment we were supposed to hit, when I looked down at Tank’s jeans and spotted a little green light flashing on and off. It took me a second to figure out what it was.

“Jesus Christ, dog! Are you trying to get us fucking killed?”

I snatched the cell phone off his hip and ripped the battery off of it. Then I shoved it back in his pocket. My heart was banging on my chest as if trying to escape.

“What?”

“What? Are you fucking retarded? What the fuck are you doing with a cell phone when we tryin’ to creep on some mutherfuckas? Fuck would have happened if that shit had gone off and them niggas came out to see who was in the hall? There goes our element of surprise.”

“My fault, dog. But you ain’t gotta get all loud. What if they had heard you?”

“I’m still whisperin’.”

“Just barely.”

“Fool, stop tryin’ to take the blame off your ass.”

“The blame for what? Ain’t nothin’ happen. You just paranoid.”

“Just keep quiet for you get us both killed, will you? Alright, I kick the door in and start bustin’ with the Berretta. You follow with the AK and spray the whole room. Don’t leave shit breathin’ in there. Not even a fuckin’ goldfish. I don’t want nobody walkin’ out that room but us.”

Tank raised the AK then hesitated. He turned and looked at me with an expression on his face that was completely indecipherable. If I didn’t know Tank better I would have thought it was fear.

“What’s up, man?”

“I can’t believe we still doin’ this shit. Four years, dog! Four years of this shit. If there’s drugs and money up in there we should just break with it and get our own thing goin’”

“Of course there’s drugs and money in there, and don’t you think Scratch knows that? You think you hard, nigga? Scratch could pay a ten-year-old to body your dumb ass. Now stop playin’ and let’s do this. These mutherfuckers probably heard us by now. All the fuckin’ noise you’ve been makin’. If I get shot I’ma fuck your fat ass up!”

I kicked the door in and the smell of stale beer, sour urine, fried chicken, and cooked cocaine, tore up through my nostrils, straight down my throat, drying up my taste buds and gluing my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The first thing I saw when I looked around were two ghost-like females sitting naked in the corner of a near empty room, hollow-eyed, souls long fled their wasted flesh, passing the glass dick back and forth sucking it dry. Both of them combined wouldn’t have made 30 years or a hundred pounds. Then I saw the four overdressed hoods who were stumbling over each other trying to get to the table where their guns lay piled up; thrown there haphazardly like one would toss a set of car keys.

I knew why Tank never took this shit seriously. I get myself all worked up like we’re about to bust in on Scarface or Nino Brown and what we find every time are a bunch of kids, in over their heads, playing gangster. The speed at which profits multiply peddling a product that pushes itself had catapulted many losers into the big-time. But staying there was never as easy as getting there.

These four punks had openly challenged Scratch’s authority by setting up their little rock house in the same projects that Scratch dealt out of and without a purchase agreement from him, which meant they were buying from someone else, which meant they were competition, which meant they were corpses too dumb to know they were dead, just waiting to be bagged and tagged.

As I looked around I suspected that they had done it not because they thought they were hard, but because they were stupid. And here they were slippin’ hard in a room filled with product, guns, and enough money to buy textbooks, school lunches, and new blackboards for an entire high school, getting their nuts off in two stank-ass teenaged pipers. I think I fired the first shot just to fight off the revulsion I felt.

The first bullet struck a fat kid with dreadlocks wearing black denim FUBU jeans with a matching jacket. He was this crew’s equivalent of Tank. The kid who had nothing before he became a dealer, no clothes, no cash, no car, no bitches, and no respect. The kind of guy girls ignored and guys laughed at. Now he had blown up and had all he could conceive of with his limited knowledge of what the world had to offer. He would’ve rather died than go back to being a zero again. And so he did.

He had barely grasped the cheap looking Tech nine-millimeter in his chubby hands before my nine-millimeter Beretta bored a tunnel through his face. I was impressed that he’d even gotten that far. His friends were mowed down where they stood. For a second I was hypnotized by the Rorschach design the fat kid’s blood and brains created on the greasy, water-stained, institution green walls. It looked like spaghetti with marinara sauce. Then Tank flew into the room behind me and the AK 47 belched death at the other three dealers. At such close range they stood no chance at all. They were torn to shreds by the torrential downpour of heated metal. I pumped bullets into them as well and they danced in the rain of heated alloy before collapsing lifelessly to the floor. Not one of them made it to their weapon.

Tank gave me that “I told you, you worried for nothing” look and winked at me as he spotted the money that was piled up in the open closet on the other side of the room where fat boy had dropped. It was like they had run out of things to buy and had just started tossing the money in the closet like dirty laundry, not knowing what to do with it.

“Yo, Tank, go check in the kitchen for they stash. I smell that shit cookin’ in there. I bet they got it piled up on the kitchen table. These trick ass niggas ain’t know shit about slangin’!”

Tank looked toward the kitchen and then back at the two naked whores who were staring wide-eyed at their massacred tricks/dealers. I followed their gaze and tried to make sense of the gruesome collage of bullet-riddled flesh to see what they were looking at. I thought I saw something, but the girls’screaming was muddying my thoughts and making my head hurt.

“Shut the fuck up! Stupid ass hookers. I said, shut the fuck up! Tank, go scoop up those fuckin’ rocks and let’s get ghost.”

Tank’s eyes fondled the two silent girls sitting bare-assed on the piss smelling floor, savagely invading every inch of their exposed bodies, before he stalked off to collect the dope. Violence had that affect on him. Perhaps his murder-stimulated libido was just the need to perform a life-affirming act to wash his mind clear of the awareness of his own mortality. Maybe he was just a sick fucker who got off on death. Either way we didn’t have time for that shit. The way his eyes molested the two young crackwhores made me squirm uncomfortably. My stomach lurched when I noticed the erection tenting the front of his pants as he passed me on the way to the kitchen.

“How could anyone still be attracted to these dried out zombie-looking bitches?”

I turned back to staring at the bodies to be certain of what I thought I’d seen earlier, then I turned and shot the two whores dead. One of the bodies flinched as the gun went off then lay still again.

“Da fuck was that?”

“Nuthin’ nigga, just grab them rocks and get your ass in here.”

“Tell me you ain’t shoot them bitches?”

“Damn straight I did!”

“Aw, man! Fuck did you do that for?”

“To keep your dumb-ass from getting’ us both capped or busted tryin’ to get a quick nut in one of these nasty stank-ass bitches.”

“Damn, they was kind of fine too. I would have been down with some of dat young pussy.”

Fine? What the fuck was wrong with tank? Those girls were emaciated and reeking of disease.

“Just do your fuckin’ job, fool.”

I walked over to the body of the dealer I knew was still alive and pressed the Beretta to his temple.

“Get your bitch ass up, nigga! Get the fuck up NOW!”

My heart was jack-hammering in my chest. My nerves were live wires shooting sparks up and down my spine. I could feel the maliciousness building and rising to the surface like an undersea explosion. This fool was about to catch a bad one. He was about to wish that he had caught the first bullet right between the eyes.

I had missed one and if he’d had a gun I wouldn’t be around to ponder the shit. I had gotten lucky and luck isn’t a very reliable way to survive. I was scared and my fear was turning me mean.

“Alright, man. I ain’t strapped so don’t shoot.”

“Fool, I should waste your punk ass right now. Now get your ass da fuck up!”

Tank came rushing in carrying a half-empty garbage bag that I knew carried the rocks.

“Yo, what’s goin’ on?”

“You missed one,” I said, trying to deflect the blame onto him.

Tank’s eyes darted from me to the kid in the red and black Air Jordans who was slowly rising to his knees, shaking himself out from under the bodies of his two homies who had died right on top of him. He was wearing a goosedown bomber jacket that had taken several hits leaking feathers out of the bullet holes.

“I ain’t miss shit! The mutherfucker’s wearing Kevlar. I guess he wasn’t totally stupid.”

Tank dropped the garbage bag and leveled the AK at the kid’s head.

“Don’t worry about this shit. This nigga ain’t goin’ nowhere. Just grab the money over there by the guns.”

I turned my full attention to the lone survivor of our assault.

“Now, muthafucka, you tryin to play possum with me? What was you just goin’ to lay in the cut until we turned our backs then try to blast us? You ain’t got to answer that shit. That’s what I would have tried to do myself.”

Tank called from the kitchen.

“All this money in here ain’t nuthin’ but ones and fives and bags of change and shit.” Tank called out, throwing down a big handful of bills like it was cheap confetti.

“That’s the money they must have got dealin’ off the street, but they had fools workin’ for them which meant they was handlin’ weight. There should be some larger bills in there too.”

“I’m tellin’ you bro, there ain’t shit in here but a couple thousand in small bills.”

“Bullshit!”

I slid the Berretta into the kid’s mouth.

“Where the fuck is the real money? Don’t make me have to ask you twice because I know I don’t stutter.”

“It’s in the freezer man.”

“Check that shit, Tank. If he’s lyin’ I’m gonna’ blast this fool a second asshole.”

“I ain’t lyin’. I swear.”

“Yeah? Well we’re about to see.”

“Ay, the money’s here, bro. Let’s take this shit and get ghost.”

“Naw. Me and this muthafucka got shit to discuss. He owes me some pain. Now, bitch, do you want to live?”

“Y-yeah, yeah, man. I don’t wanna die.” He began to sob.

“Fuck you cryin’ for? I’m about to give you a chance to live. You should be celebratin’. I could have just capped your ass. Now let me tell you about these two movies I saw once.”

A crowd had gathered outside the door. I needed to do something that would shock all of them into silence. Make them too petrified to ever think about talking to the cops. There was another reason for what I was about to do though. I wanted to send a message to the other crews as well. I wanted to make sure that no little punk ass upstarts ever got it in their heads to try dealing on our turf again.

It had become common for the police to find gang murder victims who had been horribly tortured with razorblades, cigarettes, who had teeth and fingernails missing where they had been crudely yanked out with pliers, mutilated genitals, broom sticks and glass bottles rammed into their rectums, anything to send the proper warning to the next man. “Don’t fuck with us!” I personally knew guys who had disposed of enemies by letting pitbulls tear them to pieces. I wasn’t into all of that. Honestly, I wouldn’t have had the stomach for it despite my roguish reputation. Still, I had to stay current in my methods, which meant a certain amount of creative flair had to be employed now and then.

I knew someone had called the cops, but it would be a while before they arrived. No cop was in a hurry to come to the projects and they weren’t about to come until they could assemble damn near every unit they had; not for a drug bust with shots fired. This gave me some time to deliver my message.

“See, in this one flick, there was these Japanese gangstas. One of these dudes disgraces himself and dishonors his crew so he cuts off his finger and gives it to his boss as a sign of respect. Because he did that, even though he fucked up, they didn’t smoke his ass. They forgave him because they knew what kind of guts it took to cut off his own finger. It showed loyalty and balls. But then see, there was this other movie. It was about these Haitian drug dealers. Well, they castrated this mutherfucker for dissin’ them. Cut his whole shit right off and tossed it to the dogs. You see what I’m tryin’ to tell you here, man? You got two choices, bro. You can either be Japanese or Haitian.”

I pulled out one of those cheap buck knives they sell everywhere and handed it to this petrified kid. He was just staring at it trying to pretend that he didn’t know what I was getting at. But he knew. I could see it in his eyes. I saw his eyes light up as a thought came into his head. This fool would have gotten cleaned out in poker because his face betrayed everything. I knew what he was thinking before he’d fully apprehended the thought himself. I realized then that I hadn’t reloaded but I didn’t think the kid had the heart to do what he was contemplating anyway. I cocked the hammer back on the Berretta just to bluff him, besides, I had seen Tank pop a new clip in the AK and he was once again standing right beside me. He had all the money stuffed in a trash bag along with the rocks and the powder and was looking impatient.

“That knife ain’t gonna do you much good in a gunfight, bro,” I said, putting the Berretta up against his temple and watching that light of hope snuff out like a candle the instant he felt the metal touch his skin.

“C’mon, Snap! Let’s just body this coward and break tha fuck out.”

“Fuck dat! If he wants to live he’ll give me a finger or else word to God I’m gonna shoot this nigga’s dick off!”

Then it happened. A loud scream tore from the kid’s throat and he brought the knife down on his thumb, cutting clean through the bone. Tears were streaming down his face as he held the finger out to me.

“Please, don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. Please. Please!”

He was sweating like a runaway slave and tears mixed with snot and saliva drooled from his mouth in long ropes. His eyes were bulging and fidgeting in their eye-sockets. I couldn’t have imagined a more pathetic site. He had lost his mind just like that. Scared stupid.

“Yo, man, shoot this nigga. He done bugged da fuck out!”

I shook my head, trying to get the image out of my mind before it could take root and form another unwanted memory. It was too much. This shit was getting to me. I was losing the plot. It wouldn’t be too long before I was a gibbering buffoon just like this fool. This shit had to stop. I had to get out.

“You shoot him. I’m out of bullets.”

I snatched the bag from his hand and stumbled over the bodies and out of the apartment, my Timberlands sloshing through the puddles of blood. I walked into a hallway crowded with spectators. I was mindless of their stares. It was a given that they would all lose their memories by the time the police rolled up. Scratch ran shit in the projects and I was his most feared enforcer and you didn’t drop dime on either one of us if you placed any value at all on your life.

The AK erupted seconds after I had left the room. Tank was right behind me as I took the stairs two at a time. The whole thing had taken less than fifteen minutes, about ten minutes longer than it should have, but I knew that we still had at least another five minutes before the cops arrived. Niggas killing niggas didn’t make for an emergency in North Philly. The cops down there didn’t like the idea of getting in gunfights inside the buildings. Everyone in the projects hated cops, almost all of them were armed, and police were their common enemies. Every door they passed on the way up to the crime scene held the potential for a hero’s funeral. All the police who patrolled these slums did was steal from the younger dealers and shake down the crack whores for pussy and head. Whenever anything serious went down they would wait until they were sure the gunmen had fled the scene before they went busting in. It was better to catch the perpetrators hours later when they were hiding under their grandmother’s bed than to step into some violent drama.

When Tank and I got back to G-town I was determined that I had done my last job for Scratch. I had said that before. But this time was different. We had never done anything this crazy before, walking into the middle of a drug den with no obvious means for a quick escape and blasting away like cowboys. We had done plenty of drive-bys and even close up and personal shit. But nothing this dangerous before. If I could have gotten a job sweeping floors and cleaning toilets right then I would have taken it without hesitation, but I knew that a day or two listening to the snickers of disrespect from my peers and I’d pick up the gun again. My pride would always make me choose gunshots and blood over humility. Even if it was the blood of people the same color as me.

Huey was right. I was a sell-out. I was working for a blue-eyed devil committing genocide against my own people.

If God truly loves Black folks I’ll die in my sleep. I thought as I laid down in my bed and tried to cry myself to sleep. It didn’t surprise me at all when neither sleep nor tears would come.

— | — | —

Chapter 11

“…Nothing undermines the Christian belief in God more than the existence of evil. If God is all-good and all-powerful, how can God allow evil to happen?”

—Roy F. Baumeiste, PH.D,

EVIL, Inside Human Violence and Cruelty

««—»»

Scratch was feeling desperate. Sweat bulleted down his pale face as his eyes darted from one side of the street to the other, probing every shadow for signs of life. His expression was no different than that of the drug addicts he passed. Each shambling corpse-like crack-fiend alerted his senses like a shark smelling blood in the water. His prey was somewhere close. He could almost smell her.

Trash blew down the street like tumbleweeds pushed by a gentle breeze. Packs of mongrel dogs hunted through the alleys for garbage, growling cautiously at the dope fiends who proliferated there as well. Most of the streetlights had long been broken and only one or two on each block remained lit. The night was concentrated into solid opaque curtains of black on either side of his headlights. He felt like an invading army as he accelerated through the dark, cutting a swath through the night, reveling in his alienness. Both his conspicuous affluence and his skin tone set him apart from his surroundings. He was out of place amid the honest working people who lived here as well as the welfare recipients and drug addicts. Even among the other criminals his lack of ethnicity set him apart. He liked it that way. Everything about the ghetto disgusted him. Even though it was the source of his wealth he was glad he’d never truly be a part of it. His relationship with the people who lived here was simply a predatory one. They were the nourishment he thrived on. They kept his pockets and his stomach filled.

Tonight Scratch was out alone. He had to find the whore and kill the baby without interruptions or long explanations to any of his underlings, not even Yellow Dog. Scratch was still hoping he could murder the bastard before it was born. He’d raped and killed nearly two dozen crack-whores in the last few years and still he could feel the baby’s presence. It was alive and it would be born soon.

The streets were desolate. The same five-dollar whores shambled along peering wide-eyed into the Beemer hoping for a drug-dealer who’s dick they could suck for a rock or two. The extravagantly dressed crack dealer waved them away like flies, his platinum custom Rolex reflecting starlight into their half-conscious faces. They were all too far gone. Their wombs were barren and dry from drug abuse and would probably never hold a seed again, least of all the one he was looking for.

Scratch drove the side streets deep in the heart of Germantown. He was far away from the Avenue now, but crackwhores could be found anywhere in G-town. He knew where every crack den and shooting gallery was for six miles in every direction. Rock cocaine’s influence here was nearly omnipotent. Mothers lit up after sending their kids off to school. Fathers hit the pipe after work before coming home to face their depressed and disappointed families. Kids smoked rocks behind the gym at school. And every one of them was just one or two hits away from sucking dicks in alleys for the next rock.

Even in the more residential areas nearly every alleyway flickered with the glow of heated glass and boiling cocaine. The corners on every major intersection were crowded with dealers, talking on cell phones and eyeing every passing car for a potential customer, rival, or cop. Most of them worked either directly or indirectly for Scratch. And wherever the dealers were, crackwhores circled like buzzards sniffing carrion. But none of them were who he was looking for.

Scratch turned onto Tulpehocken Street passing row after row of small rundown houses crammed together like dominoes waiting to fall. Their windows were darkened except for one or two on each block where the flickering blue light of television sets illuminated sleeping figures or where lights were left on in front rooms and on porches to discourage burglars who preferred to work under cover of night. A massive old church squatted on one corner looking dark and ominous like the structure itself was the embodiment of God, waiting to pass judgement on the sinners proliferating around it. Scratch shook his head in amusement as he peered through the front window of the church at the enormous statue of a crucified Jesus with skin as pale as his own. He wondered how it felt to worship a God rendered in the image of the race that had oppressed your kind for centuries. Perhaps the Black people who lived here took some comfort in seeing the most powerful white man on earth nailed to a cross and bleeding to death. Scratch laughed out loud when he saw the familiar glow of a crackpipe coming from behind the tall hedges surrounding the church. Crack had made church all but obsolete. Both heaven and hell were now just one hit away.

The BMW turned down Ambrose Street and Scratch smiled. This was where his most feared enforcer lived. He wondered if Snap was still awake. He thought maybe he should take the kid with him if he was going to start crashing crackhouses, but he knew that Snap and his partner Tank had just finished taking down a rival drug crew and were probably already drunk or high and trying to sleep it off. He cruised silently past Malik’s house chuckling over the irony of the man working.

“I should have that nigga, Snap, snuff the baby. I’ll see how down he really is. Even after all the fools he’s bodied, he still believes in some kind of redemption. I bet you puttin’ a bullet in a pregnant woman will kill all that noise.” He laughed again as he turned the corner.

His headlights slashed across the road illuminating a woman wearing tight jeans that had probably been baggy at one time, but were now so restrictive that she couldn’t button them or zip them up in front. Her swollen belly protruded through the open fly with her T-shirt riding high above her navel. She wore plastic flip-flops on her feet and Scratch could tell by the way she shuffled that she’d been hooked on drugs for a long time. Scratch pulled the car up next to her.

“Want to smoke with me?”

He held a glass pipe out the window with a rock of cocaine already loaded inside. He watched the pregnant woman’s eyes widen and seize on the crackpipe.

“Nuh, no. I can’t. I’ve got to stay clean for my baby.”

She was still staring at the pipe and almost drooling.

“When was the last time you had a hit, huh? A week ago? Two days ago? Quitting now ain’t goin’ to do a damn thing to help your baby. The damage is already done. So why don’t you get in here and suck on this dick. The glass one and this one.” Scratch unzipped his fly and pulled out his penis.

“I ain’t no fuckin’ whore! I got a job. You suck your own dick. Now get the fuck away from me!”

“Sorry, bitch, but I ain’t got no more time to play around with you.”

Scratch slid out of the BMW. The woman tried to run, but being in her third trimester slowed her down and Scratch seized her by her hair and dragged her to the floor.

“Helllllp! Raaape! Raaaape!”

Scratch smiled at her revealing two rows of gold plated teeth. Then he brought his fist down into her face sending several of the woman’s teeth tumbling down her throat. He struck her again and again until he realized that she wasn’t going to stop screaming until he killed her. It didn’t matter anyway. People tended to mind their business in this neighborhood.

Let the bitch scream. I’m still taking that ass.

He used his hands and his teeth to rip off her jeans and shirt. The woman’s breasts were enormous, bloated with milk. Scratch latched onto them with his fourteen karat canines greedily sucking them dry and biting into the massive glands until both blood and milk drooled down his face. He caressed her swollen stomach with a hand studded with platinum rings as he slid her jeans down to her ankles. He then took himself in hand and forced himself inside her tearing his own foreskin as much as her vaginal walls and caring equally little about either. Scratch sucked all the fluid from the woman’s breast as he drilled up inside her. His modest erection continued to grow in proportion to his excitement as if engorged by the same blood he was draining from her breast. When he finally grew tired of her screams he withdrew his cock, pulled out his knife, and cut open her belly. He reached up inside of her, pushing aside her intestines and stomach as he felt around in her womb. He then pulled out the fetus, covered in blood and amniotic fluid, sliced its head off and tossed it into the street. The woman’s screams redoubled.

“MY BABY! MY BABY!!!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

He stuck both of his hands up inside her and pulled out her uterus, intestines, and whatever organs he could get his hands on,

“Aaaaaarlllllggh! Noooooo!” she seized his wrists and tried to pull his hands out of her. Scratch grabbed hold of something inside of her and pulled hard, ripping it free. Her body shuddered from head to toe then lay still.

Scratch stuffed his limp penis back into his pants and climbed into his Beemer, leaving the woman’s vandalized corpse bleeding on the sidewalk. He cursed aloud as he slammed the car door and stomped down on the accelerator peeling off down the somber street. Once again he had killed the wrong whore. The baby was still alive somewhere. He could feel it.

— | — | —

Chapter 12

“The nature of man is not what he was born as, but what he is born for.”

—Aristotle

««—»»

I laid awake peeling the lead paint off the hundred-year-old window sill and watching the moon travel across the sky. The chittinous scurrying of hundreds, perhaps thousands of roaches click-clacked across the linoleum floor accompanied by the sound of large sewer rats scampering through the ceiling, bumping and thumping like they were carrying something heavy, stressing the already large cracks in the ceiling. It seemed ridiculous to me that after all the bodies I had made in pursuit of wealth I was still living like this.

I often sat with the window open on these stifling humid July nights listening to the activity out on the streets. Moans, and laughs, shouts, and laughter, off-beat rapping, bullshitting, and teasing, fighting, gunshots, and the wailing peel of the ambulance as they arrived to take away the wounded. It was all a part of my little ghetto world and it was the closest thing I’d ever gotten to a lullaby.

I would lie there trying to put faces and actions to all the noises and voices, to share in what they were experiencing. I would sit there in the dark wondering who was throwin’ down, who was poppin’ off rounds. And who was getting’ capped. Women’s sweet sighs and men’s passionate grunts would drift on the thick steaming air and I would wonder who was getting fucked and why I was alone. If it was someone’s wife or girlfriend. If she was enjoying herself or gagging beneath the smell of stale sweat and beer as some Neanderthal beast grunted and strained inside of her. This night however I knew that the woman who screamed out over and over again was not enjoying herself. Just as I knew the man who cursed her and struck her repeatedly wasn’t in it for his own enjoyment but for catharsis. Trying to transfer his own hopelessness and fear onto someone else thinking he could free himself of the pain. Just as I knew that it wouldn’t work. It never does.

A scream of mortal anguish pierced the still night air. I imagined I could hear the death rattle that followed. Whoever had been raping that woman had just graduated into murder. There was silence for a moment and I began to drift off to sleep. Then I heard it, a low chuckle that turned into cackling laugh, a familiar laugh. I could have sworn it was Scratch. But why would he need to rape a bitch when he had pussy being offered to him everyday from women desperate for his product or blinded by his cash and jewelry. It was absurd so I dismissed the notion and by the time I woke up I had forgotten all about it.

Mom was cooking breakfast and the smell of bacon and sausage pulled me up from my bed. I was wide awake by the time the aroma of buttermilk pancakes and syrup joined the chorus of delicious fragrances. Mom was humming to a George Benson tune on the stereo while she prepared breakfast. Her voice was as warm and wholesome as the smell of the pancakes and sausage.

My Mom is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen outside of movies and television. When I was younger and the kids would tease me about my ragged clothes, nappy hair, and too wide nose, and I would wind up bloodying them and getting suspended from school, I was always proud when my mother came to pick me up. Seeing the expressions on the other kid’s faces when she walked into the office with her long gazelle legs and her smooth flawless mocha skin was almost worth the ass-kicking I would get when we got home. Everyone would “Ooooh!” and “Aaaah!” as she strolled the hallways because, if I was an ugly street urchin, my mother was an African Goddess with a beauty and majesty uncommon in the ghetto. None of those kids had ever seen a woman like my mom before. There was no more lovely sight anywhere in our neighborhood. Not the way the sun set behind the projects looking like the world was on fire. Not the way the stars filled the sky from one end to another when you stood on top of the roof at Duval Manor on a summer night. She was a Goddess to us and she was mine.

In the early seventies she had been a moderately successful model and even did a brief stint as a sort of Black Vanna White for a local game show before she quit to find more stable work after she left Darryl the first time. She didn’t think it was healthy for her to spend so much time away on photo shoots and thought a regular job would allow her to be the type of mother she thought I needed. It was funny to me because it seemed like we lived better when she was modeling than when she got her regular job and I definitely saw her more then despite trips to New York for modeling shows and the long hours spent filming the gameshow. Still, she remained a shocking beauty and I loved her more than anything on earth. She doesn’t really speak to me anymore though. Neither does Tank and Huey’s mom. They’re both disgusted with my choice of occupations and they don’t even know the half of it.

Mom thinks I sell drugs like every other common thug in the neighborhood. I’ve never sold so much as a single rock in my life, not even a joint. I kill people. Scratch had originally hired Tank and I as bodyguards but that was just the lure to get us in. We were slowly groomed to be hitters and enforcers, taking out competition, disciplining or retiring other dealers in the crew when they got out of line, eliminating witnesses before they could talk. It was all routine now.

Like Huey, Mom thinks I’m a menace to my own people. I am. I’m a menace to just about everyone, but my friends. Still, she hasn’t had to walk home in the snow without winter boots or a heavy winter coat or with holes in her underwear since I started taking care of business in the streets. Grandma hasn’t shed any tears over overdue bills and mortgage payments. Mom hasn’t had to think about selling her body to put food on the table or clothes on our backs like many other moms in the hood often have to consider. No dating men she doesn’t even like just to have someone to borrow money from should she need to. But more to the point, I didn’t have kids laughing at my old, cheap, out of date clothes and calling me dirty anymore. I didn’t intend on doing this forever. The plan was to save up enough money to pay for college and pay off the mortgage on the house and then I’d be done with this shit.

“’Sup, Mom?”

“Don’t talk to me like one of them ignorant street niggas, boy. I ain’t no damn ghetto trash.”

“I just said, hello,” I said shrugging my shoulders

“You said, ’Sup’, like some ignorant ass street nigga. You know how to talk English you save that ghetto slang for when you’re out with your drug dealin’ friends.”

“Well, good morning anyway.”

“I don’t suppose you plan on coming to church with me this morning?”

“Since when did you start going to church?”

“Since you started runnin’around in the streets and worrying me to death.”

“I love you too, Mom. I gotta bounce though. If you leave before I get out of the shower the car keys are in my jacket.”

“I’ll walk.”

“Aw, Mom come on! If you give me a sec I’ll drive you and grandma.”

“Your grandmother left an hour ago while you were sleeping off your hangover. Your food is on the table. I’ll be back by three o’clock.”

She kissed me automatically, lovelessly, then left quickly as if she couldn’t stand to be in my presence anymore. My heart ached.

I showered and left without eating. The bright morning sun seared into my skull giving me an instant headache. My nerves were fraying, raw and bleeding. I needed to calm down and take my mind off my work and family. I needed some pussy.

I didn’t really have a girlfriend. The truth was that I was still kind of sprung on Iesha even though she was having a kid by Huey. I still fantasized about making her mine, falling in love and treating her right. I wanted to do all the things for her I could never imagine doing for any of the cheap money-hungry hoes that got passed around the neighborhood from one thug to the next, their virtues vandalized and pillaged until they wound up catching a disease and burning some poor fool and getting fucked up so bad nobody wanted them anymore. Then they’d wind up turning to crack and selling that thang to the fools who didn’t know or didn’t care. It was funny how girls who nobody ’round the way would touch could still sell their ass to guys outside the hood. I had started looking at every woman I saw in the hood as just a future crackwhore. Not one of them was worth my time—except Iesha.

Deep down I knew Iesha would stay with Huey forever if for no other reason than that he was pretty and there were too few things of genuine beauty in the ghetto that didn’t get spoiled quickly. Iesha would feel like it was her duty to preserve this one beautiful thing. And I was far from pretty. Sure, I had money and a brotha with cash could have just about any woman he wanted and her momma, but I wasn’t about supporting a woman just for some pussy and Iesha was one of the few who wasn’t like that anyway, though I might have made an exception for her.

Lately, I had been bangin’ a neighborhood girl named Yolanda and, even though I knew I wasn’t the only stud she was dirtying the sheets with, something about her raised her above the rest of the hood rat hoes the local thugs passed around like trading cards. Yolanda commanded respect around the way. She was not a small woman, five-foot-ten inches tall and one hundred and eighty pounds or more. For such a big girl she was as fast as a viper. Idiots foolish enough to try to diss her usually ended up with a straight razor against their balls and her thirty-eight pressed to their temple. She was a true player who knew every aspect of the game. One hard-ass gangsta bitch.

Yolanda seemed to be involved in everything. She sold alcohol after hours that she brought over from New Jersey by the caseload. She also sold the best weed in the neighborhood. Besides that she knew everybody’s business and was more accurate and reliable than the six o’clock news. She was the type of person whose name happened to pop up in every conversation. You couldn’t talk about G-town without mentioning her and any argument concerning G-town street history could be settled with one word from her. No one had ever had any reason to contradict her and I doubt they ever would. Even the old-heads consulted her when it came to anything that had happened in her lifetime. Yolanda was the first woman I’d ever had and the best by a long shot. No matter how many girlfriends I had since her I always wound up back in her bed.

She was gorgeous in her own way. Big black eyes with long lashes that covered her half-lidded eyes almost completely giving her this sultry satisfied look that gave you the impression she had just gotten finished smoking a blunt or having one hell of an orgasm. Both guesses would probably be right at any hour of the day since sex and weed were her two favorite vices and she indulged them both obsessively.

Her lips were obscenely full and curvaceous as was the rest of her body. They seemed to pout, smirk, and sneer all at the same time. If she licked her lips around any group of men it was a sure bet that somebody’s dick would get hard. That dick sucker pucker of hers was a perfect argument that fellatio was not an unnatural act and that at times nature even seemed to favor it. Her breasts were pornographically exaggerated. They burst through her shirts like over-ripe fruit ready to explode with nectar. She had an ass that was perfectly round and firm, but it too was exaggerated beyond all sane proportions like two basketballs squeezed together into a skirt that usually crept high up her chocolate thighs so that the bottom of each ass-cheek was visible as was the neatly manicured mons.

You could almost hear the wetness between her thighs as they swished together as if the rubbing of her own flesh against her sex kept her constantly aroused. Her lascivious curves, her movements, her voice, her attitude, even her scent was a fuck me, bitch-in-heat musk, thick with pheromones. She never wore a bra and so her tremendous mammaries bounced and swayed with her every movement. Even though she had hair that looked like it had never seen a comb, even with those worn down flip-flops she wore on her feet in the summer and the tacky white pumps she wore the rest of the time, even though her clothes were always a little shabby and she didn’t look quite clean enough, or neat enough, or proper enough for anyone to ever call their girlfriend, her very essence was sexual and you’d have had to be half-dead not to notice. She had the best pussy in town and she knew it.

Yolanda had been my babysitter when I was seven and eight years old. She was only twelve years old herself then and already far from innocent. All my homies had her as a baby-sitter and almost all of us had our first sexual experiences with her. I remember she used to sit me on her lap and pretend like I was her baby. I would suckle on her breasts, which at twelve were already 44DD and she would fondle my genitals and masturbate herself. I guess, looking back on it now, she had molested all of us. But we didn’t look at it that way and still don’t. If she had been a guy or something or if she had been old or unattractive then I might feel differently. As it was, I always looked forward to her visits. She made me feel special. In the hood fucking the babysitter was normal. It was just a part of growing up.

When I was ten I got my own key to the front door and Mom decided I no longer needed a babysitter. I didn’t see her again until I was twelve and puberty was kicking my ass. It was her that I fantasized about when I woke up with the sheets tacky with semen. I thought I was going crazy. All I could think about was tits and asses. I used to get into fights two or three times a day just to give my mind something else to think about. Then one day during the worst of my pubescent satyriasis I went to visit Yolanda. My mind felt like it was rending itself to ribbons with tension and frustration. I thought I was turning into some kind of sex fiend.

“Boy, you just becomin’ a man is all. It’s how your body gets prepared for you to make babies someday. Thinkin’ about sex all the time is just part of it. That’s normal. Fuckin’ is all men think about anyway. It’s just worse for you now because you ain’t really done it yet. I can take care of that for you though. Come on upstairs to my room.”

She led me by the hand up to her room. I wasn’t nervous at all when she undressed me. After all, it was Yolanda. She’d seen me naked dozens of times. When she touched me though, it felt better than I could ever remember it feeling.

“I’ll do it for you this time. But you’ve got to learn to do it for yourself. If you don’t learn how to jack-off you might just go crazy. All that cum might back up and clog your brain.”

She started stroking me slow and steady until I felt like I was going to explode. Then she bent down and took me in her mouth. Her lips and tongue worked me into a frenzy. She slid my manhood up between her breasts while she continued to suck on me and soon I was vigorously fucking her cleavage. That first orgasm felt as if I was having a seizure. I thought I had broken something. When the semen erupted from my organ I stared at it expecting to see blood. It felt like my brain was going to shoot right out my urethra. Yolanda rubbed my cum all over her nipples. She licked the last drops of semen from my spent organ and then lifted each breast up to her lips and licked them clean as well. I was transfixed as I watched her gobble up my seed. To this day I can’t get the image of her beautiful pillow-soft lips glistening with my semen or of her serpentine tongue lapping up my cum. I started going over her house everyday after that and she showed me every possible way to please and be pleased by a woman.

After I got out of Daniel Boone, Yolanda became like a surrogate mother for me since my own mother refused to speak to me after learning that I was working for Scratch. She cooked for me. She bought me clothes. She listened to my problems and offered advice. And she fucked my brains out.

As I rushed over to her house my mind was fixated on the idea of getting my head buffed by those big sexy lips and of course drenching her beautiful breasts in my cum again.

When she answered the door she could sense that something was wrong.

“Did you and your mom have another fight, baby?” she asked while reaching out to caress my face. Just the feel of her skin against mine instantly relaxed me.

“Yeah, but it’s cool. I ain’t trippin’”

“Uh huh. Look, this is me you talkin’ to, not one of those other dumb ass hoes you fuck around with. I know when my baby ain’t feelin’ good about something. You don’t need to front with me. I know you’s a hard nigga, but I know your weaknesses too. Now what is it? Is your moms givin’ you grief about workin’ for that white boy again?”

It wasn’t like Yolanda approved of me blastin’ fools for Scratch or anything. She was just a hell of a lot more open-minded about it than Moms was. She was willing to talk about it, giving genuine thought to my point of view, whereas Moms wouldn’t even talk about it. As long as I was involved with drug dealers she had nothing to say to me. Yolanda, so often the victim of harsh criticism herself, was less quick to judge and condemn. Still, that didn’t stop her from letting me know how she felt about things.

“You know that you and Huey are two of the brightest kids in this neighborhood. If ya’ll stopped fuckin’ around in the streets and took some kind of interest in school ya’ll could make something of yourselves out there. Ya’ll could be whatever ya’ll wanted to be and wouldn’t have to go around shootin’ and killin’ to do it. I always imagined that someday I’d pick up a magazine and read about you being some big-time politician or activist or something instead of another tool of the white man in the genocide of our people. I’m sorry to put it that way, but everyday I’m afraid that I’m going to look in the paper and see you in handcuffs or lyin’ dead in the streets. That would just break my heart, Malik.”

“Don’t worry, it wouldn’t make the papers anyway. I ain’t that important.”

“Nigga, why is you so damn cold? I used to change your diapers and rock you to sleep at night. I know you ain’t as hard as you front like you is. You just a little baby boy trying to imitate a man.”

“Fuck you, bitch! You don’t know shit about me. Don’t you know most fools would lose their lives for just suggesting that I’m anything less than a man? You know Malik, but you don’t know Snap and that’s me too. That’s who I am out in the street. Snap, the maddog psycho killer that everyone’s afraid of. That’s me. That’s who I am. So don’t get it twisted. ’Cause you don’t know if I might turn around and smoke your ass. You keep pissin’ me off I could put a cap in you right now.”

“Anytime you feelin’ rabbit you just jump, little boy. I done put bigger dicks in the dirt than yours. I love you like you was my own kid and at the same time like you was my man, but I’d still deal with your ass like all the rest of them wannabe gangstas I’ve had to put in check over the years.”

“See, that’s just the thing, Yolanda. That’s what you ain’t feelin’ me on. I don’t want to be no gangsta. I don’t want to be no killa. If I was some white kid growin’ up in the suburbs I’d probably never touch a gun. But these are the cards I’ve been dealt. I was born into the game. This is what I am. This is all I am.”

“Oh, Malik, you can be so much more.”

“How! How am I supposed to go to school and compete with kids who eat three square meals a day when my stomach is empty? Kids who get driven to school everyday when I’m walkin’ two miles back and forth in the goddamn snow and rain and shit and even when it’s ninety degrees outside? How am I supposed to do that? How can I compete with kids who can afford to wear nice clothes everyday when I’m fightin’ everyday because all the kids are dissin’ the fucked-up hand-me-downs that I’m wearin’? I got to compete with kids whose mothers cook all their meals and clean their rooms and wash and iron their clothes for them and help them with their homework every night while my mom is comin’ home from work exhausted every night and I’m out in the streets hustlin’ to get just a few of the things they get handed to them on silver platters. Fuck that shit! I ain’t got to go through all that shit now that I’m workin’ for Scratch. I got money in my pockets and clothes on my back. I got my own car and a full stomach. Those white boys and those rich ass Mount Airy niggas look at me like I ain’t shit ’cause I’m poor. But they all start jockin’ when they see me come to school wearin’ a platinum necklace that they know they couldn’t wear even if their parents can afford it because someone would jack their asses for it. I’d kill every last one of them fools just for how they’ve made me feel all these years. Fuck all of them!”

“I wish you’d listen to your whinin’ self. Nuthin’ but bullshit, pussy-ass, self-pity. You got a million reasons to be out there takin’ lives. Why? ’Cause you’ve suffered? ’Cause the white man ain’t left you no opportunities? Ain’t no nigga in the hood got much opportunity. Now what if we all picked up guns and started blastin’ each other?”

“It’d be a lot less white boys getting over is what.”

“Naw, it would be just what we have now, a lot of dead niggas and niggas in jail. We’ve all been hurt, disappointed, lied to, disrespected and cheated, including half the people you’re out there killing. Ain’t none of us had much opportunity either so does that mean it’s okay for you to kill us off to get ahead? That kind of selfishness is exactly why we ain’t got shit now! Talkin’ ’bout bein’ down for yours and getting’ paid. Ya’ll a bunch of selfish babies throwin’ tantrums. Takin’ the easy way out ’cause ya’ll ain’t got the guts to fight the white man. So instead you work for him and fight each other. I can’t stand to see ya’ll go out like suckers while those crackers just laugh and piss on your graves.”

Her words stung because I knew she was right, but I felt I had no choice in any of this. She didn’t understand. Killing is what I was made for. No one is this talented at something without using it. Me not killing would be like Micheal Jordan never playing basketball or Roy Jones Jr. never boxing. It seemed like my entire life had been predestined. How could I change what I was? I wanted to respond calmly and logically, but the gears in my machine were jamming, grinding against each other and heating up. My brain wouldn’t work. I could feel my temperature rising. Like any cornered animal I left my defensive posture and got angry, got ignorant, and attacked.

“Bitch, fuck all that! You don’t give a fuck about me! You just scared like all the rest of these weak-ass bitches! Talkin’ that same bullshit Moms been runnin’ for years. I ain’t tryin’ to hear none of it! Nigga like me don’t give a fuck. You heard? I gotta get mines and you gotta get yours and if getting’ mines mean takin’ yours then your shit gets took. Period! End of story! I don’t care if that means takin’ a motherfucker’s ride, his stash, or his goddamn life. It don’t make no difference to me. Bitch, look around you! Fuck is there to care about around here? I ain’t killin’ nobody. It’s this place that’s killin’ us all!”

I left the room so she wouldn’t see the tears spill from my eyes. I left her house so she wouldn’t see the murderous rage that scarred my face seconds after the tears had evaporated. She had ripped the scabs off some infected wounds and the blood had come boiling out. Emotional blood that would not coagulate but would just flow until it drowned me. I only knew one way to get rid of it and that was to make someone else bleed. I had to transfer the pain. For the things I didn’t have and never would, for the hopes and dreams I had squandered, someone was going to die. I knew it and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t even want to try.

When I got home I was still upset.

“Why did she have to say all that shit? Why’d she have to run that fuckin’ lecture on me when all I wanted to do was get a nut off in her fat ass and chill? I’ve got enough on my mind without that playa hatin’ bitch puttin’ salt in my game.” I was puttin’ rounds in a fresh clip almost unconsciously as I gave voice to my frustration.

When Scratch knocked on the door it was a welcome distraction. His gold teeth caught sunrays and bounced them back at me, almost blinding me.

“I got a job for you, Snap.”

“I’m down for whatever, dog. Let’s do this.”

— | — | —

Chapter 13

“…My whole world is

black and brown and closed

till I open it

with a rock

christen it with

blood…”

—Sapphire, “Wild Thing”

««—»»

“So where we goin’?”

“I need an escort. I got some business to take care of and I need someone to watch my back.”

“What type of business?”

Scratch raised an eyebrow and smiled at me. I’d heard a lot of people describe his smile as chilling, but my heart doesn’t pump Kool-Aid. I knew all about the rumors of Scratch being involved in black magic and shit. I’d seen him eat that Jamaican kid’s brains when I was a kid. But none of that stuff bothered me. I’d smoked enough Jamaican dealers who were deep into voodoo to not believe any of that hocus-pocus. It was just another trick they used to keep citizens and other dealers in check. If guns didn’t scare them then maybe evil would. Neither scared me. Scratch’s smile just looked ridiculous to me. Gold fronts went out with Flava-flav.

“Does it matter?”

“Fuck yeah it matters. I ain’t tryin’ to get killed for nobody. You don’t pay that much.”

We were doing sixty up Lincoln drive and Scratch took his hands off the steering-wheel and turned to look at me.

“I don’t scare you at all do I?”

“Man, I ain’t down for this shit. Put your hands back on the wheel!”

“Do I scare you?”

“Fuck no! Don’t nobody that breathes the same air as me scare me.”

“Are you sure?”

I pulled out the Beretta and jacked a round into the chamber. Scratch looked at the gun in amusement.

“What you gonna do with that?”

“I’m gonna put two in your forehead if you don’t put your hands back on the goddamned wheel!”

I didn’t raise the gun or point it at him. I just held the gun in my lap and glared at him murderously. You didn’t point a gun at someone until you were ready to use it and I wasn’t there yet. If I were to raise the Berretta up and put it to Scratch’s dome I’d have to pull the trigger or else I’d be dead before the end of the night.

“Really? And how will that keep us from crashin’?”

The road turned and the BMW headed straight for the big concrete barrier that separated the Eastbound traffic from the Westbound. In seconds we would have been bright stains on the road. Scratch stepped on the gas, but still did not reach for the steering-wheel. Nevertheless the car turned and continued safely up the road. Scratch laughed.

“See, boy? I’m fuckin’ magic! Relax, bro. You think I would kill us? We both got too much to live for.”

My heart was still thundering in my chest as Scratch finally regained control of the car.

“Don’t do that shit again, man. That shit ain’t cool.”

“I was just testin’ you, man. It takes some balls to pull a gun on me. You would have killed me huh?”

“Believe it.”

“That’s good ’cause I need a muthafucka with heart. There’s a war goin’ down and I need to know who’s on my side. I need to know if you’ve got the stomach for the things I’m goin’ to be askin’ you to do in the coming weeks.”

“Why me though? I thought Yellow Dog was your boy.”

“I’m talkin’ about specialty work here. This shit is too deep for Yellow Dog. He’s getting’ too old for wet work. There’s other things I need him for. I’m talkin’ about frontline soldiers. I need assassins. Are you down?”

“It don’t sound no different than what I’ve been doin’ for you the last few years.”

“True. But it’s all a matter of degrees. Like this business we got to handle today. You might think this is deep, but this ain’t shit compared to what’s coming. The whole world’s about to change.”

“What are we goin’ to do?”

Scratch’s smile faded away and he just stared out the windshield. It was several moments before he spoke again. When he turned to face me there was something cold and dark in his eyes.

“You and I are going to kill the head of the Junior Black Gangsta Lords. Just the two of us.”

“Man, you are crazy? Us? Goin’ after Jah Warrior by ourselves? Man, that crazy ass Jamaican and his crew will laugh their asses off while they saw our heads off. You must be sick.”

“I thought you had heart? You ain’t scared of me, but you scared of some punk ass Jamaican?”

“I ain’t scared of neither one of you, but I ain’t suicidal or stupid neither. How the fuck we supposed to kill that nigga?”

“The same way you kill anybody. You just keep puttin’ bullets in his ass until his heart stops beatin’. I’m serious, bro. I know where Jah Warrior’s bitch ass is holed up and I know where he’ll be goin’ in about twenty minutes. See, that muthafucka is an undercover faggot. He’s got this Filipino ’mo he’s been tappin’ for a few weeks now. He can’t let his boys know about it ’cause they’d take it as a sign of weakness and cap his ass. So he sneaks off by his self like everyday. This muthafucka is a fiend for that boy-pussy. This kid he’s fuckin’ is only sixteen years old, the sick fucker!”

“And how do you know all this shit?”

“’Cause I know the little Flip that he’s been fuckin’. We go to church together you might say?”

“Man, don’t start with all that Satanic shit. You know I don’t buy that crap. Just ’cause you ain’t crash the car don’t make you Mephistopheles.”

“Yeah, I know you don’t believe. But a lot of folks do and they’re loyal to me, which is good for both of us. Once we smoke this muthafucka we ain’t got shit to worry about. With the Gangsta Lords gone we own the streets. You won’t need to wear that Kevlar vest no more. Ain’t that shit hot?”

I peeled up my shirt and ran my hand over the vest I had strapped on underneath.

“Yeah, but them bullets is hotter.”

“You should really think about joining the faith, bro. There’s a lot more power to be had than what comes out of the barrel of a gun.”

“Yeah, there’s what comes out of a wallet. Now how much is you payin’ for me to do this shit?”

“Two gees. Same as always.”

“Naw, man. This here is too big for some measly ass two gees. You need to come up off like ten for this one.”

Scratch looked at me long and hard. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a dried cobra’s head that he had dangling from a necklace. He rubbed it, seemed to be fondling the thing as he stared right through me. I could almost feel his eyes in my chest fluttering around my heart. I could feel his breath inside my head crawling over my brain.

I wanted to yell for him to cut it out, but he wasn’t doing anything. He was just rubbing that nasty snake head. Still, if he didn’t stop I would blow his head off.

“Alright, playa, you got your ten gees. Now, is you ready to do this ’cause we almost here?”

We pulled off the freeway in North Philly and cruised down Columbia Avenue. Children, mothers, grandparents, hard working honest citizens, walked the streets right alongside gangsters, drug dealers, prostitutes, and pimps. Half-dead crackheads and junkies mingled freely with churchgoing Christians and killers and predators stalked unnoticed amongst their prey. Here crime was so normal that criminals blended seamlessly into the fabric of everyday life.

I was surprised when we parked the Beemer in front of a dilapidated row home with boarded up windows and crumbling front steps that could only have been a crackhouse. The front door was missing and shadows shambled about just beyond the light of day. I had been expecting to pull up at a motel or an apartment building or something.

“They fuck in here?”

“No. I just need to check something out first.”

Scratch hopped out of the Beemer and I quickly followed. I didn’t know what we were doing here, but it couldn’t be good. The smell of burning cocaine mixed with the rancid stench of unwashed bodies and surrounded us like a fog. I covered my nose and breathed through my mouth.

“Don’t act like a pussy, Snap. These people pay your bills.” Scratch hissed as he walked from room to room looking over every female in the place.

“Who are you looking for?”

“I’ll know when I see her.”

“Don’t tell me you lookin’ for some pussy up in here? I know you can do better than this.”

“Some of the best pussy you will ever find is right here rotting away in these places. Models, cheerleaders, porn stars, school teachers, doctors, lawyers, nuns. Yeah, they all wind up here and they do stuff for this rock that you’d be ashamed to ask a regular whore for. But no, I ain’t lookin’ for pussy. Let’s go.” Scratch looked around one last time and I could tell he was clearly disappointed about whatever he had been hoping to find in there. Then he led me back outside.

We crawled back into the Beemer and sped off. A few minutes later we were pulling up in front of the Richard Allen Projects.

“Man, you didn’t say nothin’ about going to the projects. This is where all those JBGL niggas hang. We gonna get killed before we ever see JahWarrior.”

“They don’t even come around this street. That’s why Jah had his little boy toy put here. Because he knew nobody would see him creepin’ way over here.”

It was a single story little cottage that was probably charming when it had first been built. Now it was piss and water stained, graffiti covered the walls, and weeds choked the lawn in front where the foliage had not been worn away by foot traffic and decades of neglect. The screen door hung from a single hinge and the screen itself was ripped and torn, defeating the whole purpose of having the door in the first place.

“This kid must have really come from the gutter to think this place is a step up.”

“Jah must not be here yet. I don’t see his car.”

“Damn, Scratch, you tellin’ me you ain’t never creeped before? You don’t park your ride in plain sight when you dippin’ in something you don’t want nobody to know you dippin’ in. Ain’t no way he’s gonna park his car right in front of the crib if he’s in there fuckin’ another dude.”

“True dat. Alright then, we assume he’s in there. So how do we approach?”

“We creep around back and listen for the sounds of passion. Once we know that he’s in there getting’ busy we go in blastin’ and catch his ass with his pants down. Let him die with his dick in that faggot’s ass or vice versa. That right there will kill the Gangsta Lord’s credibility in the hood when it gets out that their leader was a ’mo. If they ain’t fuckin’ we pose their asses like they was anyway.”

“I knew I liked you for a reason, Snap. I think you’re even more vicious than I am.”

Scratch killed the engine and we both stepped out of the ride and approached the little townhouse, careful to stand clear of the windows. I was nervous about not having the car running, but not nearly as nervous as I’d be if we had to make a fast retreat and we ran out to find that some kids had taken the Beemer for a joyride. I was even more nervous about Scratch’s personalized license plate. Why anyone would drive such a distinctive vehicle to a homicide made no sense to me, but I figured that Scratch wanted everyone to know who’d ended Jah Warrior’s life. More fodder for his considerable rep. The fact that his ride might alert the rest of the JBGL to his presence on their turf was a secondary concern for him. For me it was primary though. I didn’t like anything about this scene.

I didn’t like the way the dry grass and loose gravel crunched loudly under our boots as we walked around to the back of the house. I didn’t like the sheets that covered the windows preventing me from seeing what was going on inside. I really didn’t like not having Tank there to cover my back with the AK. None of that could be helped though. It was time to put in work.

The back yard was littered with garbage. There would be no way to cross the yard without making a racket. I held up a hand for Scratch to halt while I considered our options. Bottles and cans littered the ground everywhere along with old toys and car parts.

“Shit! We’re gonna’ have to do this like the PD. You go through the front and as soon as I hear you kick in the door I’ll come through the back blazin’. Don’t start shootin’ until I do. I ain’t tryin’ to get hit by no friendly fire. We cool?”

“You the man with the plan today, Snap. However you call it.”

“I just want us both walkin’ out of here alive.”

“I like that plan.”

I watched Scratch walk back around to the front of the house and poised myself so that I could get to the back door in seconds after Scratch came through the front. I crossed the yard slowly, tip-toeing in between piles of debris until I could go no further. I was right in the middle of the yard. Exposed. If someone looked out the window right now they’d spot me right off. The Berretta was in my hand and loaded with fifteen Black Talons I’d bought from a crackhead cop I knew. Even if Jah fucked with his vest on he was still a dead man.

From where I stood I could see through one corner of the back window where the sheet wasn’t tacked down. I was looking right into the bedroom. Two bodies undulated on a bare mattress in a familiar violent rhythm. Jah was getting’ himself some ass. I hoped that Scratch would be quick because I wasn’t sure how long Jah’s stamina would hold out. They were going at it pretty hard in there.

Moments later I heard the sound of a shotgun going off and I knew that Scratch was making his move. I crossed the yard in a heartbeat and smashed right through the window landing right on top of Jah and his lover.

The room smelled of sweat, ass, and Astroglide. They both screamed as glass rained down on their naked bodies and I slammed into them and knocked them sprawling off the little twin bed onto the floor. The boy was still screaming as Jah’s enslimed penis was unceremoniously extricated from the kid’s bleeding asshole.

Jah Warrior was not a small man. He was about two-hundred and twenty pounds and almost all of it was muscle. He had been a pro-boxer before he became a drug lord and I knew that he was fully capable of beating me to death. I struggled to get to my feet and raise my gun, but my legs had somehow gotten tangled in a blanket and some sheets they must have ripped off the bed in their passion. Luckily Jah was still entwined with his lover and having just as much trouble freeing himself from the tangle of limbs.

“What tha fuck?” It was all he had time to say before Scratch entered the room and aimed the shotgun at his head.

“Hello, Jah. You’d better tell your bitch to shut up if he wants to live.”

“Don’t kill me! I am loyal to you. You are the dark Lord. The Morning Star. I am your loyal servant forever. You promised me power, a high seat in the hierarchy of hell!” The boy’s eyes were wide with fright and wet with tears. His voice shook as he spoke and his body trembled.

“What da fuck you talkin’ ’bout?” the big Jamaican asked as he sat on the floor with his impressive organ still swollen and erect as if he was just waiting for us to leave so he could finish sodomizing his little playmate. “You sell me out? You make a deal wit’ dis peckerwood?” He started to rise and Scratch cocked the shotgun.

“Settle down there, Rastaman.” He turned to address the Fillipino kid who was growing hysterical. “You’re right, Micheal. You’ve been very loyal to me and I did promise you that you would be rewarded for it with an honored place in hell. Now, I want you to go there first and wait for me.”

He unloaded both barrels into the boy’s face taking his head clean off his shoulders and sending a shower of brain and bone all over Jah.

“Noooo! Fuck you, mon! Fuck you! You nah ’ave to do that! Your beef is wit’ me. He ain’t done nut’ing to you, mon!”.

“You should be thanking me, Jah. Your little butt buddy gave you up and I ain’t have to pay him a dime. He did it because he thought I was Satan. See, he was raised Catholic and so he thought he was going to hell already for being gay and letting you pack his shit everyday. He thought that if he helped me I’d be able to make his stay in hell a little more comfortable. What do you think, Jah? You think I’m the devil.”

Jah Warrior didn’t answer Scratch. Instead he turned his attention to me.

“’Ow can you work for this creature? Don’t you know what he is? Can’t you see what master you’re serving?”

“I serve the same master you do muthafucka, the almighty dollar bill. Time to say goodnight now.” I pointed the gun at his head. Scratch cocked the shotgun again. He aimed it at Jah’s erection, which had finally diminished after the death of his lover.

“I’ll see you in ’ell white boy. You too, ’ouse nigga!”

When we were done pumping rounds into him he was not even recognizable as a man.

Clumps of powder burned flesh littered the floor from where the shotgun had disintegrated it from the two mangled bodies. Molecules of blood floated in the air and pools of it soaked into the mangy carpet. Both corpses were missing most of their skulls and their torso’s were punctured and gouged, so riddled with bullets that they were literally falling apart.

“You’d better go on back to the car. I don’t think you want to see the rest of this.”

I looked at the brain matter coating the walls and floor and my stomach roiled.

“Are you going to eat that?”

Scratch raised an eyebrow quizzically and looked deep into my eyes trying to read me. I purposely kept my expression neutral.

“Eat what, Snap?”

“Eat their brains. Are you going to eat their brains?”

I could see the surprise cross Scratch’s face even though he too was struggling to keep his face emotionless. His eyes narrowed as he regarded me even closer, scrutinizing my face for some clue to my thoughts. Then he smiled and eased back, but his eyes still did not leave my face.

“I’m going to have to keep my eyes on you, Snap. You know a lot more than you let on.”

“Why do you do it? Just to convince the Jamaican posses that you really are the devil? More of that voodoo shit?”

“It’s just part of the ritual, man.”

Scratch reached his hand down into Jah Warrior’s ruptured skull and scooped out the stringy pink pulp that was all that was left of his brains, except for what was now oozing down the wall in back of him. I decided to take his advice and wait out in the car. I was just stepping out of the room when I heard the wet smacking sounds as Scratch consumed his prize.

— | — | —

Chapter 14

“…I don’t think anyone expects a sheep to go into the den of the wolf and love the wolf, because the sheep would wind up in the stomach of the wolf.”

—Malcolm X

««—»»

Scratch dropped me off in front of Yolanda’s house with my pockets fat with ten thousand dollars in cash.

“You done good today, playa. I’ll see ya around. I might have another job for you soon.”

“Yeah, okay. Just let me know.”

The gold encrusted red BMW took off down the street creeping slowly. I could see Scratch watching me in his side mirrors as he rolled down the block. He was smiling again. I turned and walked up the steps to Yolanda’s front door.

“What you want now?”

“Shut the fuck up,” I said as I grabbed her in my arms and dragged her back into the house kissing and undressing her. I kicked the door shut while lifting her dress over her head and dropping my pants. By the time we made it to the bedroom we were both completely naked.

I turned her around and bent her over the back of an overstuffed chair in the middle of the room. We made love violently, angrily. We didn’t speak, no apologies, no explanations, we just fucked hard and angry, saying with our bodies what pride prevented us from speaking. We scratched, spanked, and bit each other, shifting seamlessly from one position to the next, from the chair, to the floor, to the bed, as we hammered out orgasm after orgasm until we both collapsed sweating and quivering into each others arms.

I was laying in her bed, still inside her, looking at the semen glistening on her lips and pooling in her belly button, when the doorbell began ringing frantically and Huey’s voice called out from the street.

“Yo, Malik! Yolanda! C’mon and open up! I know that pussy can’t be that good that you got to spend all day up in it. Bros before hos, remember, Snap? Bros before hos.”

A wide grin spread across my face as I rolled out of bed and tip-toed barefoot across the splintering hardwood floor. The window rattled loudly as I yanked it open.

“Man, what you want, Huey? Makin’ all that muthafuckin’ noise down there. You pullin’ me right up out the pussy.”

“Fuck that old tired pussy! Over-sexed hooker gets too much dick as it is. Shit, don’t you know you gotta make them miss it sometimes? That bitch ain’t missed a day of dick since she was twelve. She done got spoiled on it.”

“Fuck your little yellar ass, nigga. You wish you could get some of this pussy.” Yolanda yelled from behind me.

“If that nigga don’t get da fuck down here I might just come up there and break your big black ass off with some of this.” It was kind of funny to see Huey clowning with Yolanda. It was a mood you didn’t see from Huey everyday. He was usually so serious and intense. I was enjoying their little verbal sparring match.

“You ain’t gonna do nuthin’ with that little yaller dick of yours.”

“Hooker, I’ll slap you in your fat-ass mouth with this yaller dick!”

“Little yaller dick, nigga. Little yaller dick.”

I came out the front door and shook Huey’s hand.

“Man, why that bitch of yours always got to have the last word on everything?”

“Why you always got to be antagonizing her?”

We started walking off down the street before Huey even told me where we were going or what he wanted.

“I’m just fuckin’ with the bitch. Besides, I hate how that hooker always tryin’ to play mommy to everybody. She thinks she knows everything and she ain’t shit herself. Sittin’ on her fat ass sellin’ beer and weed and collectin’ welfare checks. You can do much better than that shit, bro.”

“I could have Iesha, but, since you got her, Yolanda is about the best thing going.”

Huey knew how much I cared about Iesha so he just let the matter drop. In all the years Huey and I had been friends we never argued, mostly due to Huey’s deft handling of my volatile moods, but lately we’d been disagreeing more frequently.

“So, peep this, bro. I’m bored out of my muthafuckin’ mind and Iesha’s getting on my goddamned nerves. I was thinkin’ we could go on one of them payback missions up in the Northeast like we used to do you know?”

It had started back before we all got arrested and sent to reform school. Huey and I would go on these missions in the white neighborhoods. What we would do is go up to Northeast Philly and beat and rob white folks on their own turf just to let them know that there was no insulation from the streets. We wanted to let them know that just because they lived across town from us didn’t mean they were safe from us. It didn’t mean they could ignore us.

It started when my homeboy dirty Frank got stabbed. Frank was a thief who was too stupid to go outside the neighborhood. He would steal from his own neighbors. Any fool could figure out that nobody was making a special trip to our poor-ass little community to steal a few used TVs, stereos, and VCRs. So, anytime something came up missing you’d more than likely be able to recover it by knocking on Frank’s door. I had to step in his ass once myself over my Mom’s VCR, but still he was my boy.

Frank and I went to grade school together and he used to live right across the street from me when he was staying with his grandparents while his mom was in rehab kicking heroin. He still lived only two blocks away and in G-town that almost made him family. Then, one day, he gets stabbed right in front of the police station in broad daylight and his attacker just walks away. Police just yards away saw nothing and no one was ever apprehended. Even worse, as Frank lay bleeding from a gut wound, the cops searched him and then harassed him about a couple vials of rock they found in his pockets, treating him like a suspect instead of a victim. Frank could have died and nobody would have been convicted. There would have been no story on the eleven o’clock news, no public outcry, and no change in police policies and procedures.

Nothing ever changed for the better until it started happening to white folks and they began writing letters, and calling their congressman, and talking to the newspapers, and threatening lawsuits. So we decided to make it happen to white folks. We decided to bring the ghetto to their doorsteps. That very night, while Frank was having his intestines stitched together at Germantown Hospital, Huey and I took a bus up to Northeast Philadelphia for some payback.

In our neighborhood the Northeast was endearingly known as “Whitey Land”. It was notoriously racist, home to the KKK, skinheads, a Nazi biker group, and several other White Power organizations. Back then most people believed that a Black kid would have had to have a deathwish to walk through that neighborhood. It was perfect for what we wanted.

We imagined fat rednecks sitting at home watching Black kids dying in the streets and simply changing the channel, not giving a fuck about drugs and crime as long as it stayed in the ghettos and out of their lily white neighborhoods while their own kids were in the backyard smoking meth and huffing paint. To them every Black casualty was just one less nigger to compete with for jobs and women. It enraged us to imagine them living safe and comfortable while our homeboys bled to death in front of police stations and no one seemed to care. So we were going to give them a taste of the fear and anxiety, the helplessness and frustration and impotent rage that we all lived under. We meant to bring the fury of the Black ghettos into Whitey Land and plop it raw and bleeding on their doorsteps.

We started out robbing other kids of their cash, jewelry, clothes, and sneakers, we even rolled some fool for a can of Pepsi once. It wasn’t about the goods or the money. It was all about payback. We actually believed we were doing some good in some grand karmic way. We thought we were giving balance to the universe. It was about not allowing the middle-class to forget about those below the poverty level that they left behind imprisoned in economic dungeons, boiling in nihilistic rage and desperation as we waited out our life-sentence. Sometimes we didn’t even jack them for their money at all. We just beat them down on general principles.

The last time we went on one of these missions we succeeded only in chasing ever larger groups of white teenagers around. They were all too cowardly to fight even though in one case they outnumbered us nearly five to one with nine to our mere two. White boys weren’t like brothas around the way. They didn’t have the same manhood issues we did or if so they certainly managed to handle it better. In the hood you don’t have much but your respect and most of us would kill or die for it. These kids had everything so losing a little face to a couple grimy-looking Black thugs meant little to them. They could always tell themselves that we probably had guns or that we were on PCP and they wouldn’t miss a moment of sleep over it. We thought they were all a bunch of candy-assed over-privileged pussies and every time they ran from us increased our anger. Tonight we weren’t about to be denied.

Huey and I left Yolanda’s house and walked down Green Street to Chelten Ave to catch the J-bus up to Frankford. We both had our gats on us, but we had no intention of using them unless we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by the Klan or something, which wasn’t likely. This wasn’t the South and we weren’t some passive, Jesus-whipped, handkerchief head niggas that would hide in the closet and pray while Klansmen burned the house down. If we ran into the KKK there would be a fuckin’ white sale in the hood that night.

After we got off the bus it started to rain so we walked quickly up Frankford Ave, afraid that the rain would chase any would-be victims in-doors before we could get to them. We walked up the street with no umbrella for nearly an hour with no luck. The streets were deserted. We were just about to give up and go home when we passed a Burger King and some fools yelled out, “Niggers!” It was the first time I could remember being so happy to hear that word.

This was what we had been waiting for. We didn’t know who had said it. We didn’t know how many there were or how big they were. We didn’t know if they had guns and knives or pitch forks and torches. We didn’t care.

We ran into the parking lot in back of the Burger King where about a dozen white kids stood, sat, and leaned on their cars. About eight of them were boys with another five girls with them. I was less pissed off that they had yelled nigger than by the fact that kids that young already had cars. I was sure that none of them had ever had to kill anyone to get it either.

They looked like wet alley dogs. Their stringy hair was plastered to their faces and dripping with rain. Even through the rain I could smell their fear. For not the first time or the last it amazed me that these pale, anemic-looking creatures could have conquered and enslaved anyone, especially my proud Black race. Even the biggest one among them, who was clearly Tank’s equal in size, struck no fear in my heart. They just looked pathetic and pitiful in their faded Levis, wrinkled Heavy Metal T-shirts, and scuffed Doc Martins.

How could people with so much money dress so poorly? I wondered.

“Who tha fuck said that?” I growled.

The girls looked genuinely frightened. They were expecting a serious brawl to break out. Obviously, they knew their own people less than we did. These weren’t poor crackers from Fish Town, or crazy Irish sons of bitches or Italians from South Philly. Those bastards were just as hard as we were. These were rich WASP kids, or at least middleclass, which, in our eyes, made them rich. They didn’t know shit about the street. They didn’t have to. They were insulated by their money and their little middleclass neighborhoods. The only thing they knew about violence was what they heard in rap songs and watched in movies. They weren’t going to fight when there was a chance they could run or talk their way out of it. If one of them spoke up none of his boys would back him up and they all knew it. They’d just stand there petrified while the two of us beat one of their homeboys half to death.

No one said a word as we stalked in between them glaring at each one of them. Huey was in a rage to hurt someone, not for what they had yelled but for a thousand other offences they had indirectly committed against him. He wanted to kick someone’s ass for the sins of the entire White race. He grabbed the biggest muthafucker among them, just ’cause he looked like he was thinking about challenging us, and began to beat him like he owned him.

“You said that shit didn’t you? DIDN”T YOU? You white peckerwood muthafucker!”

Huey launched into him so viciously that three of his boys actually steeled their hearts to confront us, but I knocked one of them out cold with the butt of my nine millimeter and slowed their roll with the quickness.

“Don’t none of ya’ll bitches try to jump in that shit. Unless somebody wants to fess up and take the beating this big pussy’s takin’,” I looked from one face to the other. One by one they dropped their heads, “I didn’t think so. Ya’ll just gonna let your boy here take the ass-whippin for you, huh? Pussy ass muthafuckas,” I hissed.

They all backed up and just stood there watching. The big White boy that Huey was dealing with ran straight at him with his fists cocked back in what looked like some super-hero pose. The comic book stance left his midsection exposed to Huey’s devastating kicks and punches. The wind exploded from the big kid’s lungs and he doubled over grimacing in agony as Huey’s shin slammed into his ribcage with a sound like a baseball bat hitting a watermelon. He kept coming though. I’ll give him that. There were tears running down his cheeks from the pain, frustration, and humiliation. He tried to close the gap and grapple with Huey, but no way was Huey going to let this big cracker get his meaty paws on him. The guy took so many blows trying to get a grip on Huey that by the time he grabbed hold he was too weak to do shit and Huey simply slung him to the ground. The guy fought hard though. Somehow he managed to get back up.

There were cuts above and beneath both of the white boy’s eyes, which were rapidly swelling shut. His lip was busted, his nose was broken, and he was holding his side where Huey had kicked him and I suspected that at least one rib was broken. Still, the guy managed to surprise me by actually landing a few solid punches on Huey this time as he lunged clumsily forward. Huey’s nose started bleeding profusely and soon his face was covered with it. I started to get worried when I saw Huey stagger a little after the last punch caught him right on the chin. The White boy’s friends cheered at this latest development and I was so angry it took everything I had to keep my finger from squeezing the trigger on the nine which was once again tucked away in my pocket. Then Huey grinned, with a mouthful of blood, and teeth turned a crimson hell. It was the most evil expression I had ever seen. Even the big cracker’s friends stopped cheering. They knew their friend was about to catch a bad one.

This time Huey charged. He grabbed the big kid by his hair and brought his knee down into the boy’s face repeatedly, his body a frenzied blur of savage motion until the kid slumped unconscious to the blacktop. Still, even after the white kid was unconscious, Huey continued to smash knees and elbows into the guy’s face in a blind rage. The kid’s skull began to lose shape as bone was pulverized.

“Huey! No! Stop! Stop! You’re going to kill him!”

Blood had started running from the White boy’s ears, nose and mouth, and he had started convulsing.

“We got to get out of here, bro!”

I snatched Huey off of him. The kid’s face was destroyed. It had lost all integrity and was little more than a bleeding pulp of hair and skin. It was the most gruesome sight I had ever witnessed. I barely pulled it together in time to run. I had frozen in anticipation, waiting to see if the kid’s brains would run out of his ears.

We took off back the way we had come and left the kid bleeding in the Burger King parking lot surrounded by his horrified friends who were too scared to even scream. They stared in mute shock and didn’t even see us leave. I was in shock too as we ran. I felt like I was in a dream.

He did it with his bare hands. He killed that kid with his bare hands!

There was no doubt in my mind that I had just witnessed a murder, a barbaric and senseless murder of incomprehensible savagery. No way could that kid have survived a beat down like that. If he did he would never be the same again.

My feet barely touched the ground as we ran. I was high on adrenaline and the smell of blood and fear— the spectacle of violence.

My God, what did we just do?

It wasn’t that I felt sorry for him or felt any guilt or remorse whatsoever. Fuck a white boy! What really had me trippin’ was the degree of hatred a person would have to have in their hearts to do that to someone with their bare hands. I could never imagine hating anyone like that unless I had loved them first or they had hurt someone I loved. To do that to a complete and absolute stranger who’d done nothing to me I’d have to be insane. I’d capped fools plenty of times, but this was hands on, it was intimate, passionate. Not the cold detachment of pulling a trigger. Shootin’ a fool you could almost imagine that it was the gun and not you that had killed him. But…this? The blood was literally on his hands. That type of hate completely defied my reason.

It occurred to me that Huey had problems that ran far deeper than anything anyone could see. There was something monstrous and cruel in him. Maybe we all had problems like that, deep down. Because, as monstrous and inhuman as Huey seemed to me right then, I had still killed three times as many people as he had in the last year alone. If Huey was a psychopath then what the fuck was my excuse?

We ran all the way back down to Frankford Ave. I trembled and paced back and forth looking over my shoulder for the police. If the bus didn’t come soon I was sure I would have lost my mind.

“Settle down, man! You look guilty as fuck.” Huey was laughing.

“I think you killed that White boy, playa.”

“If only the whole race had one neck, huh?”

“Nah, bro, I’m serious. That dude is deader than disco. That was some ill shit back there.”

Huey looked me up and down, sneering with contempt.

“Fool, I know damn well you ain’t cryin’ like some little bitch over no dead peckerwood? How you gonna be out there killin’ brotha’s all over the street for that devil you and Tank work for then start trippin’ when we finally do a devil who deserved to get done?”

I stared sheepishly at my feet, unable to face his accusatory eyes. I certainly didn’t feel any grief over that White boy’s death. I was just worried because of how the law looks at it. Cops didn’t trip when niggas capped niggas, least of all when it was drug related, but when two Black roughnecks beat a middleclass suburban kid to death in front of his friends in a good safe neighborhood like the Northeast, shit definitely hit the fan. Killing a White boy wasn’t no casual thing and I didn’t really appreciate being made an accessory to it without even being asked first. Still, true homies backed each other up right or wrong and I wasn’t about to desert my boy now. We’d been through too much shit together. Besides, I couldn’t really explain to Huey that my biggest reservations came from a fear that he was insane and the knowledge that to society any ten of the niggas I murdered in the streets didn’t compare to killing one White kid.

“I don’t know, man. That shit was just a little deep.”

“Naw, brotha. That shit you do is deep. You out there killin’ your own fuckin’ people at the whim of some power crazy white devil. That shit is deep. What I just threw down was revolutionary! That was taken out reparations on a devil’s ass!”

Huey was standing up and glaring at me with his face contorted into some bizarre combination of a snarl and a grin. Spittle flew from his lips as he barked out his words. The bus had pulled up now and people were exiting and staring at us as Huey raged and roared. I pulled Huey close and whispered to him trying to calm him down.

“Yo, nigga, chill! You tryin’ to get us arrested? Let’s get on this bus and get the fuck out of here before the cops roll up.”

“I ain’t your goddamned nigga!” Huey shouted backing away from me and shrugging my arm off his shoulder, “If that’s what you wanna be then you can call yourself that, but I got better things to do than be a nigga all my life.”

Huey’s eyes beamed hate and shined with an almost religious fervor as he spoke. I was still glancing over my shoulder looking nervous and scared. Huey hissed and rolled his eyes in disgust. He turned his back on me and walked onto the bus.

I walked behind him and sat down next to him staring out the window. I felt foolish. I knew I had just lost much of Huey’s valued respect. He didn’t look at me for the rest of the ride. Instead he stared at every white face on the bus challenging them with his eyes, daring them to return his contemptuous glare as if everyone of them had done him some personal wrong.

If only the whole race had one neck.

He had meant it. There was no doubt that he would murder every Caucasian in existence were it possible, including the half that was inside of him. That much hate just couldn’t be healthy.

Huey’s message would have affected me a little deeper if it wasn’t for the fact that he was such a cold-hearted killer himself. Even though he cried and poured out a little liquor for every brotha he killed it still seemed to me like the pot calling the kettle black. If he’d never killed another Black man and had only killed White people I might have bought his revolutionary stance, but I knew that the kid he’d pummeled back there was the first White person he’d ever done, but it wasn’t his first homicide. Still, my conscience was ringing and I couldn’t wait to numb it into silence with a couple of Colt 45s, a fat ass blunt and some of Yolanda’s talented head. I couldn’t wait to get away from Huey. It would be a long time before he and I kicked it again.

««—»»

The flames crawled down the Marijuana filled cigar, eating it slowly away as I sucked its senses-dampening vapors down into my lungs and tried to forget about my life. Yolanda wasn’t home so I had hooked up with Tank. I passed the forty to him and he tilted it up like it was Gatorade and he’d just finished a marathon.

Tank and I sat down in the playground of Lingelbach Elementary School where he and I had first met years ago. We didn’t speak, instead we indulged in that timeless male ritual sucking our emotions down into a dense fog of inebriation, down into the dark emotional chasm where every pain we’d ever endured festered. It was a reservoir that was far from infinite and would need to be emptied soon before it erupted violently outward. The cold bitter taste of the beer washed over my tongue and scrubbed away the faces of the vengeful dead. When the blunt was passed back to me I sucked it down to a roach. I was as high as I could get, but it wasn’t enough. I still couldn’t shake the depression I was in. Even Tank was looking uncharacteristically melancholy. Without any warning at all tears sprang to my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

I cracked open another forty and plugged it into my mouth trying to silence the sobs before they began. I nearly drowned myself as my sorrow took hold of me full force and shook me like a broken toy. Beer sprayed everywhere as I choked on my own grief. I hurled the bottle at the swings a few yards away and felt a little better somehow to hear it shatter.

“Hey, bro? Are you alright?”

“What tha fuck is we doin’, Tank? What tha fuck is we doin’?” The tears were flowing freely and my chest heaved with sobs. I wanted to destroy whatever it was that was making me hurt so bad. My hands balled into tight fists and my forearms bulged. I wanted to find the pain and beat it down the way Huey had beaten down that White kid. But it was deep inside of me where I couldn’t get to it.

“How tha fuck did we turn into monsters, Tank? We were kids! Just a bunch of fucking kids! How did we get this way? We’re murderers, man! We’re fucking monsters!”

Tank looked at me and for once that cynical look of amused disinterest had left his face. There was none of the boredom and apathy that had seemed to be carved into his features, a congenital characteristic as much a part of him as his blue-black skin. Now, incredibly, his face showed compassion and understanding. It was obvious that he would have rather not ever have had this conversation and was conceding to it only because he sensed I needed it. He sighed deeply and looked up at the darkening sky. Then he took another swig of malt liquor and one more hit off the blunt. When he spoke his voice was slow and measured, heavy with emotion.

“Remember how poor we were when we first started doing this? Remember how things changed for us after we met Scratch? Like, things got better from day one. I mean, right after we did Meech, remember how proud you were to go to school in all those new clothes and not be laughed at for once? We finally felt like we were regular kids and not just some dirty little poor kid from the ghetto? Remember that feeling, Snap? I felt like somebody for the first time when we walked into school and all the kids were jockin’ our new gear. It was like my first shot of pussy it felt so good. Even the females were given me a little respect for once. Even our teachers looked at us differently. Don’t even front like you don’t remember how they used to look at us with disgust and pity. Most of the time they just ignored us completely like they just figured that stupidity and poverty went hand and hand. I wouldn’t have dared raise my hand back then because I never wanted to call attention to myself. But I didn’t even sweat walkin’ up to the blackboard to solve a problem when I was sportin’ Jive and Cross Colors. I’d have never done that in a pair of raggedy ass hand-me-downs because if anyone had laughed at me I’d have had to kill them. Those clothes, that money, it changed our lives man. I would have killed anyone, even you, to keep that feeling. But now man, sometimes I’d give anything to be that poor dirty little fat kid again. You think you the only nigga with a conscience? Shit, I still think about what we did to Meech. You blew his ass away right at my feet.”

I was in shock. It may sound stupid now…I mean human beings are human beings…but I would have never imagined that Tank worried about this kind of shit. He always seemed to be so unaffected by everything. Tank was human. My whole perception of reality changed with that one realization.

But if he was human how could he kill so casually?

The thought kept coming back to me as I sat there guzzling the last of my forty and wiping tears from my eyes. How could Tank spray a guy with that big ugly AK and then go get a cheesesteak hoagie and laugh and joke with the hoes up on the Ave.? How could he be so nonchalant about it? Then again, how often did I really sit and think about the fools I smoked? Tank said he still thought about Meech and I hadn’t thought about him in years. He had been a stepping stone and I had stepped over his corpse and forgotten him.

What was wrong with me?

“Man, I know. I felt the same way. You think I wouldn’t have sprayed this whole damn neighborhood for a new pair of Adidas? Shit, you ain’t got to think because that’s just what the fuck we’ve done. I got cops following me all the time, raiding my house, harassing my Mom and Grandmom. I got to watch my back all the time, scared some nigga’s relative that I smoked might creep up on me and try to get revenge. Did you ever stop and think about how many bodies we got between us? We out there droppin’ fools like flies and half of them don’t even deserve to get bodied. I’m sayin’, it’s like Scratch be havin’ us kill somebody every damn month like he’s got a fuckin’ quota to fill. I think he does it just to keep muthafuckas scared so they don’t fuck with him. We’re endin’ muthafucka’s lives just to build that White boy’s rep.”

Tank nodded in agreement.

“I know what you sayin’, dog. Shit, half the time I think he just be havin’ us body muthafuckas to keep us busy so we don’t turn on him. He’s one paranoid muthafucka and that shit worries me too. He might start thinkin’ we out to get him too and get us done one day. But man, we don’t need to be thinkin’ about all this shit. We in this now ’til the end. We can talk this shit, but ain’t neither of us goin’ back. You tryin’ to go back to bein’ nuthin’? I don’t think so. So why even sweat this shit? I be thinkin’ about quittin’ all the time, but we both done got too used to bein’ paid. Ain’t neither of us givin’ this up. So let’s stop trippin’ on all this depressin’ shit. It’s blowin’ my high.”

“That’s the problem, Tank. I can’t forget. This shit is eatin’ me up. I be thinkin’ I see ghosts and shit at night like followin’ me around and shit. And I ain’t talkin’ about when I’m asleep and dreamin’ neither. I mean I’ll be drivin’ around in my car and I think I see people that we smoked up and walkin’ around like they stalkin’ my ass.”

“Dog, you trippin’. That weed is fuckin’ with your head, Snap. Maybe this shit is too strong for you. What you trippin’ on all this shit for anyway? Was it what Huey said earlier? Forget that nigga! He so damned conscious, but he a killer his damned self. He was out there bodyin’ fools before any of us. Let somebody call him White boy or a half-breed and see if they don’t get smoked. Shit, he killed your fuckin’ Dad! I ain’t sayin that muthafucka didn’t deserve it. I’m just sayin’ that Huey ain’t got no room to be comin’ down on us about shit.”

“Yeah, it’s Huey, but it’s something else too.”

“What is it, man?”

“I know what our next job is.”

“What?”

“You know. I know you knew it was comin’ too. The whole neighborhood knows it’s comin’.”

“You mean Warlock?” Tank asked.

“Yeah man, everybody knows that he’s the one that cut up those dealers up on Duval Street. He gave them fools ear to ear grins. Fuckin’ stupid too. He might as well have autographed his work. Everybody knows he’s the only fool still runnin’ around with a blade instead of a gun. Everybody else got gats except for crackheads and hoes. And as clean as that cut was it wasn’t just some crazy crackheads or nothin’. That shit was professional.”

“Fuck would he do that shit for though?”

“I don’t know man. That fool ain’t been right for years. He’s probably trippin’ ’cause his little brotha Nikky just had a heart attack from hittin’ the pipe and he probably figured those was the fools who sold it to him. Shit, Nikky got the shit from watchin’ him smoke. But niggas can’t take responsibility for they own fuck ups. They always got to blame somebody else.”

“Damn, Snap. Didn’t you and Nikky used to play together when ya’ll was little?”

“Yeah, and Warlock too. He was like a big brother to me. He’s the reason I wanted to get in the game to begin with. He wasn’t all fucked up then like he is now. He used to be clean as fuck, a straight hustler. You remember how he used to cruise around in that big ass Lincoln dressed like a pimp and shit? He showed everybody ’round here what it meant to be a playa. I got all my game from him. He used to shoot dice, steal cars, he even sold dope. His main thing was pimpin’ hoes though and he had some fine ones too. I never knew where he got them from, but he had white ones, black ones. He even had a couple Puerto Ricans once. Then his dumb ass started usin’ and he fell the fuck off like all the rest of them junkies. He kicked heroin and went straight to crack and fell in love. He ain’t been right since.”

“That’s fucked up, playa. You really gonna do him?”

“The trigga has no heart my brotha. I ain’t gonna do him, but this nine millimeter damn sure will.”

“That’s pretty cold, man.”

“I didn’t make this world, Tank. I just have to live in it. If I had a choice shit wouldn’t be like this. But it is what it is. Warlock is crazy anyway. He might come up and slit my throat next or yours. Who knows what he’s trippin’ on now. We’re just as responsible for bringing drugs into the hood as those two dealers. We’re Scratch’s enforcers and he knows that shit.”

“Yeah, whatever. That shit is still cold.”

“Alright, so you’ve got a fuckin’ conscience now. Well, keep that shit to your damned self. Since when did you start givin’ a fuck anyway?”

Tank just smirked, raised one eyebrow, and tilted up the last forty, draining it dry.

“I don’t give a fuck if you don’t. You goin’ to that game tonight?”

“What game?”

“The basketball game at the college?”

“Jerome and Ty playing?”

“Why tha fuck else would I be askin’? Me and Huey gonna hook up and go.”

“Ya’ll need a ride or something?”

“Naw, we straight. I was just seein’ if you gonna be there to support ya dogs?”

“Of course I’m gonna support ’em. They my dogs. I’m gonna be there.”

The twins were having their first basketball game at the college level. After years of taking fools to school on playground courts and high school gymnasiums they had both received athletic scholarships to Temple University. Tyrone had even been offered a scholarship to run track. He could sprint like a gazelle, but hoops were his passion. He could leap from the foul line like Dr. J and execute a perfect two handed slam-dunk while twisting in mid-air. They called him Jr. Jordan and he tried his best to live up to the hype. He still played the neighborhood courts on the weekends just to keep his skills sharp, even after practicing all week long at college. Basketball was his guarantee that he’d never have to do the things we were doing for cash. Seeing us fighting and struggling, slangin’ and bangin’, was enough to instill him with a fanatical drive to escape the legacy of his roots.

His brother Jerome wasn’t quite as dramatic. He came back to the neighborhood to hang out, smoke weed, drink forties, and get his nut off in the gaggle of willing hoodrat skeezers that flocked to him because of his amateur stardom. He hated college. The politics of his fellow classmates seemed naïve and ridiculous to him. They were all concerned with feminism, animal rights, gay rights, pacifism, conservation, wildlife preservation, recycling, and he could have given a fuck about all that. All Jerome was interested in was making dollars. He believed in the golden rule. Who ever has the most gold makes the rules. In his mind if you wanted to change the world you had to start by acquiring wealth. Only the wealthy truly had the power to affect change in today’s world. All us poor mutherfuckers could do is beg them for their help. He wasn’t into begging. He was into taking.

“Ya’ll mutherfuckers are wastin’ your time with all this activism shit. Don’t you know might makes right? Don’t no rights exist without the ability to defend them. How you goin’ to say you have the right to walk down the street without getting’ mugged when fools are rollin’ your ass for your ends every time you leave the house? Sayin’ you have the right don’t mean shit. Those are just words. They don’t mean shit until you bust a cap in the next fool who runs up on you tryin’ to take yours. That’s how rights are established. What would our constitutional rights be without a military and police force that defended them? Get some power, some fuckin’ cash, and then you can change all the shit you want.”

This viewpoint did not endear him with the intellectual establishment. Overnight he was branded a fascist. He didn’t care. He despised the idealism of the sheltered eggheads who attended this school, who had never experienced a real challenge to their personal rights. He wished he could just play basketball and be left alone.

Jerome’s problems weren’t over when he reached the ball courts either. Being a twin meant constant comparisons to his brother and his style of play was completely different. He wasn’t a flashy showman like Ty. His forte was hitting jumpers and three-pointers. He couldn’t run the ball down court to save his life. He didn’t have any fancy fakes and dribbles. His ball handling skills were woeful and his defensive skills were non-existent. He was always getting the ball picked from him. He covered it up by refusing to dribble the ball and just shooting it from wherever he was at on the court. Seven out of ten times he’d send that rock sailing through the net, which was just often enough to get him full tuition.

The twins were both college freshman now while the rest of us were still in high school and some of us had already dropped out. This made them sort of local heroes. I didn’t know shit about college ball. I didn’t even watch the pros unless the Sixers were playin’, but this game was gonna be a reunion of sorts. Brothas I hadn’t hung out with since Jr. High were going to be there. I didn’t even know who Temple was playing.

When we showed up there were already about a dozen niggas from around the way hangin’ out in front of the building. Every one of them was clutching a bottle of Colt .45 with a blunt tucked behind their ears. They were arguing with security. Fat Greg was there and I could see the outline of an Uzi beneath his oversized sweatshirt. As I looked around I could see other suspicious bulges beneath the rest of their clothing. A bunch of guys I didn’t know had joined the argument and it looked only seconds away from becoming a full-scale riot.

“Fuck is goin’ on?” I yelled and everyone turned to look at me. Those fools who didn’t know me turned back around and kept arguing with the security guards who had now been joined by reinforcements. My homies stopped and waited for me to walk over.

“Yo, Snap! These fools won’t let us up in here—wantin’ to frisk us and shit—they took Drew’s beer and poured it out on the ground!”

Everyone was looking at me now. They may not have known my face, but they all knew my name and my rep. I looked over at Drew and he had his hand under his jacket like he was reaching for a weapon. His face was swollen with indignation. I doubted that he was strapped though.

“If you ain’t about to pull a gun from under there then you better take your hand out. That’s how fools get killed.”

Drew smirked and flashed me the little silver .22 tucked in his waistband. I turned to look at the guards who had managed to calm down the other troublemakers and were starting to move the line into the gym. I turned back to the mob barely suppressing my anger.

“Get the fuck over here and put that shit away. All you fools get over here! This is Tyrone and Jerome’s big day and you niggas is about to fuck it up by startin’ a riot in this bitch? Now, I’m gonna tell ya’ll muthafuckas what’s gonna happen and I don’t want no shit or I swear to God I’ll fly a muthafucka’s head right here and now. Ya’ll take them guns and whatever the fuck else ya’ll got and put them back in your cars. Let them guards do they fuckin’ jobs and act like ya’ll got some sense once you get up in there. Just can’t stand to see brothas makin’ something of they selves can ya’ll? Always gotta fuck shit up for everybody.”

They all stood back, looking at me like I was crazy as I snarled at them in disgust.

“Nigga, I ain’t putting my gat nowhere. Fuck you and them twins!”

I was just about to pull out my own gat when someone stepped in front of me and punched Drew in the gut, doubling him over. He slumped to the ground with his eyes full of tears as his wind exploded from his lungs. When Tank pulled his fist out of Drew’s stomach he was clutching the little .22 in his hand.

“If you ain’t got no respect for nobody then your bitch ass shouldn’t be here. Now, you’ll get this back when the shit is over and if you got anymore problems we can discuss it then. We got any problems?”

“Nuh-naw, Tank. We cool,” Drew wheezed as he struggled back up to his feet, still wincing in pain.

“How about the rest of ya’ll?”

Both Tank and Huey were now standing shoulder to shoulder with me glaring out over what seemed to be half the brothas and sistas in the neighborhood.

“It’s all good, Bro.”

“Yeah, it ain’t nothin’ but a thang.”

“You know we cool, Snap.”

They started walking off toward their cars draining their forties and getting last hits off their blunts. Huey and Tank walked with me to my car.

“That nigga Drew is gettin’ out of control. He’s startin’ to believe his own bullshit. If ya’ll hadn’t shown up I was about to split his wig.”

Huey turned his flat dead eyes toward me and smiled. As I watched, the smile turned to a scowl and then both expressions faded entirely leaving a lifeless mask.

“Yeah, I bet you would have.”

The twins lit up the court. Tyrone scored twenty-four points with ten rebounds and six assists. Jerome scored eighteen points. No rebounds. No assists. Temple still lost though with scores of one eighteen to one eleven to the Georgetown Hoyas. Darlene and Tina were there and I thought Tank was gonna faint when Darlene asked him out on a date.

“I know you like me, nigga. So why come you never asked me out?”

“Uh-um.”

“Fuck that! You takin’ me out this weekend.”

She smiled sweetly, winking coyly, one hand on her luscious hips, the other reaching out to carress Tank’s nervously twitching cheek.

“And make sure you take me someplace nice. I don’t play that Mickey D shit.”

She walked off switching her perfectly sculpted, perfectly round, exquisitely muscled ass. My dick got hard and I don’t even like the bitch. Tank was probably bustin a nut in his pants. Right after she left, Scratch showed up.

“That was some game, huh? Them niggas sure can ball.”

“Watch your fuckin’ mouth, white boy! I should bust your fuckin’ grille for that shit!” Huey growled, pushing his face up into Scratch’s pasty mug. Tank dragged Huey away from Scratch before they could lock horns.

“Look, Snap, I just stopped by to tell you I need that business taken care of tonight, alright?”

“Then it’s done. Now get the fuck out of here before Huey caps your ass.”

I was tempted to ask Tank to let me do this job on my own. That would have been the sentimental thing to do, but Warlock was a crafty muthafucka with that blade and I had seen brothas get gutted with shanks in juvie. The idea of having my belly ripped open by a six-inch stiletto and seeing my steaming innards come boiling out of my stomach or of having my throat cut and drowning in my own blood, chilled me deeper than the idea of catching a bullet or just about any other way of dying. I took Tank along just in case. If that sneaky little nigga got the jump on me I would want Tank backing me up with the AK. Warlock was no ordinary crackhead and I was feeling more than a little guilt over the idea of killing him, not to mention my guilt over the death of his brother who had once been a close friend.

Just like any other teenagers we thought we were invincible. That doesn’t mean we didn’t take all the proper precautions. It just meant that we thought we could out fight, out shoot, or out smart, anyone we came across. It never occurred to us that there may be some situations we couldn’t handle. The only way we thought we could die is if we fucked up and got caught slippin’. It never occurred to us that we could plan and execute everything perfectly and still get killed. It never occurred to us that people died in this game no matter how strong or cunning they were. That bullets really don’t have any one’s name on them. No matter how many innocent children we saw gunned down in drivebys, no matter how many times we saw our homeboys torn apart as we stood mere inches away by bullets meant for us, no matter how many funerals or public service announcements we saw, it never occurred to us that we could be next. Not because we were careless, but just because we were in the game, and that’s as careless as you need to be to get your ass taken out.

I was nervous as a muthafucka when we rolled down G-town Ave, looking for Warlock. Tank sat in my big old Impala with a turkey and cheese hoagie between his legs right next to the AK. If a cop had drove by he would have seen that big ass assault rifle immediately, but of course Tank was giving less than a fuck. If cops had rolled on us Tank would have held court in the street and I would have thrown down right beside him. Some cop might have been given a parade for being shot in the line of duty, but the two of us would certainly have wound up as just two more sorry-ass dead niggas bleeding on the sidewalk. I threw my jacket over the AK, which drew a slight chuckle from Tank. I was sure that his lackadaisical attitude would bury us both some day.

“Yo, there’s that muthafucka now!”

Tank grabbed the AK and swung the barrel out the window. I grabbed the rifle and pulled it back inside. Warlock, who was just passing a local bar called the Starlight Lounge, caught the motion and bolted down the street.

“Man, fuck did you grab me like that for? We could have had that nigga!”

“Yeah, and started a big muthafuckin’ drug war in the process! You can’t just go sprayin’ up the Ave like that. We ain’t the only killers in the world you know.”

Those two blocks of Germantown Avenue between Washington Lane and Walnut Lane were where all the players hung out, both young and old. You could buy anything here: weed, heroin, crack, powder, guns, pussy, anything. The most dangerous thugs in the G kicked it on this stretch of avenue and it was no place to go unloading an assault rifle.

I floored the Impala’s big four hundred and fifty two horsepower V8 engine and sped off after Warlock while Tank’s eyes scanned the vast array of hardened gangstas he’d almost unloaded into. Buttaman, the tall inky black skeleton who singlehandedly controlled all the horse on the West side of G-town, glared murderously at our car as we drove past. His hand was shoved deep into the pocket of his trench coat and probably gripped around the handle of the big forty-four Colt revolver everyone knew he carried there. His soulless eyes looked through us without seeing two of the hardest niggas in the game as we thought of ourselves, but a couple of dumb-ass trigger-happy amateurs who probably wouldn’t live to see half of his forty years. He slid his hand out of his coat, sneered, and waved us off. I felt like I had just passed through a ghost. Even Tank let out a long staggering breath. Buttaman was a dead aim with that forty-four. If he had decided to pull it out we would both be dead. There was not even a question about it. We were alive because he didn’t feel we were worth wasting the bullets. He was from a different time when people didn’t kill each other over shit like that, or at least that’s what they told us. For a split second, looking into Buttaman’s eyes, I felt the fear my own victims must feel when they see me coming. It was a feeling I hoped I’d never have again.

“He went around the corner!”

I spun the Impala into a sharp turn and lit up Tulpehocken Street with my fog lights. Warlock ducked into the playground in back of the pre-school in the middle of the block. We knew he was going to jump that fence and keep going into the junkyard next door where there would be plenty of shadows and shit to hide behind for an ambush. A shiver crawled up my spine, raked its icy claws over my shoulder, and wrapped its fingers around my neck to strangle the breath from me at the thought of following him into that death trap. Tank had already grabbed the AK and had the door half open as I pulled to a stop in front of the big mango-colored pre-school.

“Come on! Lets get this muthafucka!” Tank said and was out of the car without a hesitation.

Warlock ain’t shit but another crackhead, I told myself, but the thought of that blade sliding between my ribs brought fresh shivers up my spine.

I looked around the playground, but I knew that Warlock wasn’t there. He had already gone into the junkyard next door and was probably waiting to ambush our asses.

“Yo, Tank! Don’t get too far ahead of me, man!”

“Just hurry and catch up before we lose this slippery son of a bitch!”

Tank’s voice came from no more than five yards ahead of me, but it was so dark in that junkyard that he was completely invisible. I jumped the fence into the junkyard. My feet came down on what was probably a paint bucket and I went sprawling face first into the dirt.

“Shit! Where you at, Tank?”

“Right here.” His voice echoed off the piles of trash and seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“Where, man? I can’t see shit in this muthafucka!” I was starting to panic. This wasn’t a cool situation at all. Alone in the dark with a knife-wielding homicidal crack-fiend.

“Fuck looking for me. Go find that crazy son of a bitch!”

I could hear Tank’s heavy footfalls moving quickly, increasing the distance between us.

“Wait! Let’s stick together on this. We don’t know where this muthafucka could be.”

“Stop worryin’ and handle your business, Snap!”

I cursed to myself as I heard Tank moving further off into the night. It would’ve made me feel a hell of a lot better to have Tank beside me with the AK. Normally that’s how we played it, but that night it was like Tank had something to prove. Maybe getting Darlene’s phone number had gone to his head and boosted up his testosterone? Whatever his problem was, that type of ego shit was dangerous.

Slowly my eyes started to adjust to the darkness. The rusted hulks of ancient pimp-rides loomed in front of me stripped of all their splendor. Somewhere among that graveyard of crumbling Detroit steel was the man I had to kill, undoubtedly just as intent on killing me. Off to my left I heard scuffling, the sounds of a struggle, and then the unmistakable thud of a body hitting the dirt. I’d heard it too many times not to recognize it. I looked through the windshield of an old Buick and saw Warlock’s afro silhouetted by the moonlight as if the clouds had parted just to illuminate that scene and give me a clear shot. As always, I fired reflexively, without taking time to aim, and as always I hit my target. I ran around to the front of the car where Warlock’s body had fallen. I practically tripped over him.

Warlock was doing St. Vitus’ dance, flopping on his back like a cockroach in a cloud of Raid, with a fist-sized hole in his chest. Beside him, lay Tank with his eyes fixed and dilated, staring skyward. His mouth hung open in an agonized scream that never made it past his lips. He had been nearly decapitated. Pink muscle fiber stretched like used bubblegum across the chasm between where Tank’s head had been joined to his neck. Pearlescent bone shined ghastly white through the slash in his flesh where the knife had sawed through to his cervical vertebrae. The foot-long switchblade, still clutched in Warlock’s hand, dripped with inky black blood that glistened in the moonlight. My stomach imploded, collapsing inward until it touched the back of my spine, sending out an avalanche of half-digested food. Tank was gone, dead, because of me. Warlock had been in the process of butchering him just before I shot the crazy bastard. Somehow Warlock had surprised Tank and took him out before he could fire a single shot.

I began kicking Warlock’s dying body, trying to crush every bone in him, to pulverize him the way I’d watched Huey do that peckerwood kid. He shuddered one last time and lay still, yet I continued to stomp and kick his corpse. The sound of his bones snapping was a soothing noise to drown out the whirlwind in my head. The tears came without relent as the reality of Tank’s death took hold. My foot sank into the hole in Warlock’s chest and came out sopping with blood with bits of his internal organs stuck to my sole. I slammed my foot back down into it and began jumping up and down imagining that I was stomping on the bastard’s heart.

It was the sirens that snapped me out of it. I ran across the yard and jumped the fence into a neighboring backyard and then from one yard to the next until I wound up in an alleyway that led out onto Washington Lane. I was only a few blocks from home, but didn’t want to face my mother dripping in blood. My first instinct was to go to Huey’s house, but I was afraid he’d take his brother’s death out on me. I knew Huey believed that Tank was only involved with Scratch because I was. And even though I knew that Tank would have still been down even if I wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t have been out running around a junkyard chasing a lunatic if I hadn’t asked him to come with me. I wasn’t in the mood to confront either Huey’s rage or my own guilt. I decided to go back to Yolanda’s house.

The police were probably celebrating Tank’s death at this very moment and since they knew he and I were a team, they would be coming after me next, hoping to take me down for Warlock’s murder and get all three of us out of the game in one evening. I knew they’d be kicking down my Grandmom’s door any minute now looking for me. Hopefully they wouldn’t think to look for me at Yolanda’s.

There were sirens everywhere. The police were combing the streets. I knew I had to get inside somewhere before they picked me up. Yolanda’s house was only two blocks away, but it seemed like miles. I couldn’t get to it by running through alleys and hopping fences. I would have to cross Washington Lane, one of the busiest streets in our neighborhood and one that was now filthy with law enforcement. I watched patrol cars speed back and forth as I hugged the shadow of a large Evergreen tree in a yard that bordered Washington Lane and McCallum Street. As soon as the police sirens began to trail off I made a dash across the street and kept running until I was at Yolanda’s front door.

She had a man in there with her. I could tell by the way she answered the door—wrapped in a sheet The disheveled look of her hair and make-up, even her smell, was that of someone who’d just been fucked.

“Hey, baby. I didn’t think you’d be back tonight. It’s not really a good time right now.” She glanced over her shoulder into the house and then turned back to me and smiled shamelessly. I ain’t never been the jealous type, but right then I wasn’t in the mood to wait outside while some other stud got his dick wet in my pussy. I tried to push the door open and walk past her. She held the door closed as I shoved against it.