Against the Grain (6 page)

5

Kay stood and looked around the visiting room until his eyes focused in on his first visitor since being in the penitentiary. He smiled and walked in her direction. Ms. Janice Frost, known to everyone that knew her as Mama Frost, stood and ran into her son’s arms. No matter how big or how grown Kay had become, he was still her firstborn, her baby. She held her son tight and began to cry. He held onto her also and wanted to cry because he missed his mother so much. Knowing that this wasn’t the place to be seen shedding tears, he quickly got himself together.

“How are you, Ma?” he asked.

“I’m fine. How are you doing in this place?” Mama Frost asked. “Are they feeding you right? Are they giving you proper medical treatment? Do you sleep well at night? Have you made any new friends?”

“Yes, Mama, I’m fine. Everything is alright with me. They give me three hot meals a day plus I’ve got plenty of food in my locker. I sleep fine and no, I haven’t made any new friends.”

“Well, you look good. Have you been working out? Your daddy used to work out.”

•         •         •

The last time Ms. Frost had seen her husband, Donte, was the night she came home from the hospital with their son, Caleek. Donte had been in a bar celebrating the birth of another son when he heard another patron say that Caleek might not even be his. Someone told him that the baby belonged to Sonny, who was Mike’s uncle from D.C. This enraged Kay’s father and when his mother returned home all hell broke loose; Donte beat her up real bad. Kay was angry and frightened. He had seen his father lose his temper one too many times. That night he turned to the one father figure who never let him down—Scatter. Scatter’s crew grabbed Kay’s father. They gagged him and threw his ass in the trunk of a car. Then Scatter sent a couple of his guys to move Kay’s family into one of his houses. Scatter drove to an abandoned warehouse where he had a few men waiting. His men took Kay’s father out of the trunk and beat him half to death before chaining him to a chair. Blinded by car headlights, Kay’s father couldn’t see his son or Scatter sitting in the front seats of the car. Scatter let him squirm a few minutes before he got out of the car and walked up to him.

Kay’s father started talking shit, and said, “What the fuck is going on here?”

“Shut the fuck up, nigga! You ain’t in charge of this!” Scatter said in a stern voice that was Kay’s cue to get out of the car. Kay walked forward, but his dad couldn’t make him out. He just saw a figure coming toward him and heard the footsteps. When Kay stepped into the light, his dad couldn’t believe it. He felt relieved, knowing that his son would never hurt him.

“Kay, what the fuck is this? What are these niggaz doing?”

“My name is Arkadian. Only my friends call me Kay!”

“Boy, I raised you. I’m your father. I’ll call you whatever I want. You better get these chains off me before I—”

“Before you what, nigga? Before you beat my ass like you did my mama? Before you bust my lip like you did my mama’s?”

“Son, you don’t know what’s going on,” his father said in a softer tone. He realized quickly that this was no longer his little boy standing in front of him. This was an angry man on the verge of hurting him. It made him regret not standing up to his own father who was so abusive toward his mother that they had to run away in the dead of the night when he was fourteen.

“I know this, nigga: You ain’t never gonna put your hands on my mama again!” Kay nodded in the direction of one of Scatter’s men. The guy moved quickly behind Kay’s dad, pouring gas all over him. When the can was empty the guy stood back and Kay pulled out a joint. Kay lit the joint and held the match up in the air so his father could see it.

“Please, son! Don’t do this!” he begged at the top of his voice. Kay blew out the match and walked closer to his father. Leaning in close he spoke in a hushed tone, “I thought about it, nigga, but I don’t want to stink up the place with your burning corpse.” He then reached in his pocket and pulled out a pack of C-4 plastic explosive with a timer set for three minutes. Kay started the timer and threw the bomb in his father’s lap. “Die quick, cocksucker!”

Kay got in the car and everyone else followed. As they were leaving the warehouse, they could hear the man Kay had known all his life as his father, screaming his head off. But they were in a secluded area and no one would hear him.

Kay sat back in the seat and hit the joint again. He inhaled hard then closed his eyes and released the smoke after holding it for about thirty seconds. When he exhaled, he looked over at Scatter and they all burst out in laughter.

“You think that nigga figured out it was a dummy bomb by now?” Scatter asked.

Kay, still laughing, said, “He probably died from a heart attack!”

“I think he shit on himself,” one of the crew said from the backseat.

“I know one thing, little nigga, you is the man of the house now. He won’t be coming around no more,” Scatter told Kay when they pulled up in front of the house that would become his new home. Kay looked at Scatter and thanked him for everything, then gave him a hug.

“Go ahead with that sentimental shit,” Scatter said to break up the awkward moment. Then as Kay was getting out the car he added, “I’ll let you know what you owe me for the house tomorrow, youngblood.”

Kay made so much money running errands and being Scatter’s number-two man, he eventually paid him the $15,000 that Scatter wanted for the old house. Kay’s mom never knew that he’d paid for the house. She always thought that Scatter gave her the house after Kay’s father left, so she made sure to charge her kids rent.

Mama Frost never found out what happened to her husband that night he disappeared. She didn’t care either.

•         •         •

Mama kept asking question after question. Kay could tell that she was trying to hide her illness. Kay stopped her in mid-sentence, “How are you doing, Mama?” She looked into her son’s eyes, then down at her hands, which rested in his. She didn’t say a word.

“I know you’re sick, Mama. How bad is it?”

“I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m waiting on the results of a few more tests to come back. I may have to get one of my breasts removed to keep the cancer from spreading. I hate the thought of them cutting on me, besides, we can’t afford the treatment anyway.”

Kay looked at his mother and wanted to cry so bad but couldn’t.

“Don’t worry about it, boy. The doctor said there’s a good chance it’s not malignant.”

“I’ve got some money saved up, Mama; you can have it. I’m sure that with my money and your insurance you’ll have enough for the operation. Tell Tramaine to give you that money he’s holding for me if he still has it.”

“I’m alright Kay, really I am. I’ll probably outlive you if you don’t get yourself together while you’re in here. I never thought I would have to visit one of my babies in prison. You don’t know what this is doing to me, Kay. I’m in more pain from seeing you this way than I am from this damn cancer. I can’t do this anymore, Kay. I’m never coming to a place like this again so I suggest you get your shit together because if you get locked up again after you come home, don’t expect me to come visit you. You know that I love you with everything I have inside me. And I understand that when your daddy left, you felt like you had to step up and be the man of the house. I am proud of you for that. But you are my firstborn and no mother wants to see her child suffer.”

“Mama, I promise to get myself together and I understand everything that you’re saying. I promise you, I’m not coming back to this place. When I come home, Mama, I’m going to get me a good job and take care of my son.”

“How are you handling Sonia leaving you?” When Kay didn’t say anything his mother continued, “I know you’re hurting, baby. She was the love of your life. You had her back when no one else did, not even her family. So I know it hurts, baby, but life don’t stop with her. The things that don’t kill you only make you stronger. Consider yourself lucky, you found out how weak she is before you invested a whole lot of wasted years and money. I want to say something to her about the way she treats you, but then she might get on the defensive and stop me from seeing my grandson.” Tears rolled down Kay’s mama’s face as she talked. When Kay leaned over and kissed her she smiled.

“Baby, why do they got you in this ugly orange jumpsuit and the rest of these guys have on something different?”

Kay told her that he was in segregation, but he lied about how he got there. He said that he refused a direct order from an officer who was trying to give him a hard time. For the next few hours the two of them talked about everything they could think of. They even talked about Kay as a baby and him growing up. They laughed and had a good time until it was time for Mama to leave and for Kay to return to the hole.

6

Over the next sixty days, Kay and Yang talked day and night. Read and talk, that’s all they could do being on lockdown for twenty-three hours a day. Everyone involved in the altercation received sixty days in the hole and lost fifty-four days good time as punishment for their actions. On the sixtieth day, two men were released every other hour. An officer came to the cell where Kay and Yang were being housed and told them to pack up their things because they were getting out next. Kay looked at Yang and said, “You know that we’ve got to watch each other’s back now. There’s over a hundred D.C. niggaz on the compound and they’re going to be waiting for us to slip and if we do, we’re dead.”

“I know, Kay. I have been thinking about that for some time now. I’ve also been thinking about how these men tried to violate me. I could never let this happen again, so I’m sending our good friend Phife a message.”

“What kind of message? What are you talking about?”

“You will know in time,” Yang said.

Kay stared at Yang for a few seconds, not saying a word. He was studying his movements, trying to get a hint of what Yang was talking about, but he couldn’t.

Two days later they were out walking the track getting some exercise when another inmate, JD, walked up to Kay and Yang. Both men stopped in their tracks. Kay and Yang stepped in opposite directions as if to surround JD. “Hold on. I don’t want any trouble. I was just wondering if you heard about Phife’s family getting killed,” JD said while staring directly into Yang’s eyes.

No one responded to his question.

“You know what’s funny though, and I have never seen anything like it in the ten years of my prison bid, almost every D.C. nigga on the compound has checked in. The D.C. niggaz control sixty percent of the dope on the compound, now they’re gone. Everybody knows where the hit came from. That means all of their operations are yours.”

Yang spoke quickly. “We don’t want it.”

Yang and Kay stepped around JD and continued to walk away. Then JD yelled to their backs, “It doesn’t matter if you take over their operations or not, you’re still the new shot callers.”

Kay turned around and said to JD, “Since we’re the new shot callers, you and the rest of the Jersey niggaz take thirty percent and give the other thirty percent to the Baltimore niggaz. I hold you accountable. Just make sure Yang and I get ten percent every week. That’s five from you and five from them.”

JD smiled at Kay, happy with his new position. “You got that, Kay,” he said and walked away. Kay turned and continued to walk the track with Yang, knowing that he had just made some allies in case some more dumb shit jumped off in the future. He didn’t say anything for about five minutes.

“Is that the message you were talking about, Yang?”

Yang stared at Kay with a cold dark look in his eyes. Kay got quiet again. Then Yang said, “Sun Tzu says, ‘Attack when they are unprepared, make your move when they do not expect it.’ ”

“That’s deep, but who the hell is Sun Tzu?” Kay asked.

“Come, Kay, follow me,” Yang ordered. The two men headed back to their room. When they got to the room Yang reached into a box under his bed and pulled out a book. He wiped the book off, turned around, and handed it to Kay.

“
The Art of War
by Sun Tzu,” Kay read out loud. “Oh, this is where you got that bullshit from,” Kay said with a smile on his face.

“No bullshit! You study, Kay. You will need to apply lessons in this book to your life many times before you die, especially now that you’ve been introduced to the drug game,” Yang explained.

Kay could see that Yang was pissed off by what he said so he thumbed through the book and stopped on no particular page and began to read, “The one who figures on victory at headquarters before even doing battle is the one who has the most strategic factors on his side.” This really caught Kay’s attention, so he hopped up on his bunk, laid back, and started reading the book from the beginning.

7

Eight years into his bid, Kay and Yang were on the recreation yard, watching the other inmates play basketball, lift weights, and talk. Yang noticed a large group of inmates over by the handball court taking pictures. “Kay, you have accomplished a lot over the years. You’ve gotten your associate’s degree in business, you’re a certified welder, and you’re certified in masonry. Few men have done what you have done in such a short time. You will be going home in a few months so I must ask you, Kay, what are your plans when you get there?”

“I could sit here and tell you that I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that, but I really don’t know, Yang. So much has changed since I’ve been locked up. I don’t know what to expect when I get out there.”

“Come with me,” Yang told Kay as he began to walk toward the handball court. “What’s up, Yang?” Kay asked as he followed.

“I have been in prison for twenty-two years and I never take pictures, not even for my family. Today I take picture with you, my friend. If ever there is a time that you are in need, take the picture to my family in California and they will know what you mean to me.”

8

Months later, Kay and Yang were up earlier than usual. They really hadn’t slept a wink and talked and played chess all night. They went to breakfast together, and as they exited the chow hall, Kay asked his friend, “Will you be alright?”

“Of course I will, don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. But there is one thing I want you to do for me.”

“What’s that?”

“I want you to find a nice young woman and fall in love and have a family. The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman’s heart.” Kay just looked at the little man for a short moment and they both smiled at each other. Kay said, “Okay, you’ve got that, and I’m going to name one of our sons after you.” They both roared with laughter.

“Attention on the compound! Attention on the compound! Inmate Arkadian Frost, report to R and D. Report to R and D.” When the announcement came across the prison PA system, Kay knew that it was time for him to go so he hugged his friend. They looked at each other one last time and went in separate directions.

They would never see each other again . . .