Antebellum (17 page)

Henry looked over at SaTia. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, as if to say, “I tried to tell him, but he wouldn't listen.” Clearly, they had some information that I was not privy to.

Henry raised his voice level to reach mine when he responded. “Don't nobody out there need you, Moe. Everybody that need you is right here in the house. I mean, what if P. Silenzas got another nigga out there with a gun, waiting for you to come out on the front step? What then, huh?”

The thought of being shot on my front step cut my next statement
short. Mama and Big Mama came out to the living room to see what all the noise was about, and SaTia was staring at us from the steps. The entire house went silent. Henry looked around at everyone, then walked up to me and whispered in my ear. “Look... you know I'ma follow you wherever you go. If you wanna go out and hype up the fans, then do you. Just know that you ain't doin' it for them—you doin' it for Da Nigga.”

When he finished, he took enough steps back to leave me by myself in the middle of the room. I felt like a bull's-eye as the clock on the mantle continued to count seconds away.

“So...umm,” Brian said, breaking the silence with his anxiousness. “What we doin,' Moe?”

“Get your gear on. We goin' outside.”

Ray, Brian, and Henry all put on their shades, chains, and caps. Henry moved a little slower than usual, but when I walked toward the door, he was right beside me. SaTia took a seat on the steps while Mama and Big Mama returned to their cooking.

I stopped at the door. I could still hear the chants of the people outside, daring me to put myself in harm's way to prove I was still a superstar.

I glanced over at Henry. I couldn't see his eyes through his shades, but I sensed he was looking at me.

He was right. Moses wanted, even needed, to stay inside and figure his life out. But Da Nigga needed to be fed.

That's what they don't realize,
I thought to myself as I took hold of the doorknob;
If he starves, everybody starves.

I twisted the doorknob, counted to three, and threw the door open.

“AY YO D.C.! CHOCOLATE CITY, WHAT'S POPPIN'!”

Thunder echoed through the air. The crowd's roar made the house shake. I soaked it all in like sunlight. The electricity went
into my chest and through my entire body. It ran down my legs and stopped at my toes. It ran through my arms and lingered in my fingertips. I stood there with my arms outstretched and my eyes closed, and it felt as though lightening was pulsing through my veins.

“To hell with the Silenzas!” I spoke to myself as the crowd turned me back into a superhuman. “I run this right here! I run this!”

The mass of people almost broke through the line of cops at the front lawn. The officers waiting in their cars jumped out to help. I could hear Ray, Brian, and Henry screaming and jumping around, feeding off of the same energy I was. I couldn't make out their words, and I didn't care. They were here for me. Everyone was here for me.

I opened my eyes and realized I ruled the world. For the first time since the
Phil Winters
Show
, I was invincible again.

I didn't have a mic, but I belted out the hook to my latest single anyway. Miraculously, the crowd heard me, and began rapping it along with me.

“HOES IN DA ATTIC, YEAH! HOES IN THE ATTIC, YEAH! COME TO MY CRIB, I GOT SOME HOES IN DA ATTIC, YEAH!”

Now that I was back to being indestructible, I scanned the crowd for the female I was going to sleep with tonight.

That's when I saw Orlando standing off to the right.

We caught eyes for two seconds before he turned around and made a gesture to the upstairs window of Mrs. Marble's house, across the street.

He gave a speech with his eyes in those two seconds. He told me I'd broken his heart. He told me I forgot about the streets, and I forgot what it meant to be down for my niggas. He told me
I'd chosen a female over him, and he couldn't let that slide. He told me I should've been down to ride on the Silenzas no matter what, and he couldn't let that slide either. He told me he didn't know what he was doing, but he was so angry that it didn't matter, and even if he regretted it afterward, I still deserved what I got.

And right before he pivoted on his front foot and turned his back toward me, he told me that he was sorry.

I realized what was going to happen before I had time to react to it.

The first shot knocked me back about two steps. Everything went quiet after that. I could see the crowd going mad, but I couldn't hear them.

The second shot knocked me clear back into the house and turned all the sound on again.

I could only hear the screams of the masses. My eyes were fixed on no particular spot on the ceiling, and I couldn't seem to move them. I lay on my back in the hallway where my father had come and gone so many times, and I could start to feel my blood pooling under my back.

There was a hole in my chest. I could feel air in places other than my lungs. I didn't feel any pain, though. It felt more like my body was a puzzle, and my core had been removed from the board.

I heard Big Mama's good china fall and shatter on the floor as she and Mama hurtled across the kitchen. SaTia's scream pierced the chaos. She had stayed on the steps while the guys and I went outside. After the second shot, my body flew past her before it landed on the floor. She got to me before anyone else did and cradled my head in her lap.

“Oh my...oh my God...Moe...MOE! MOE!”

I couldn't answer her. I began to feel blood in my throat, choking
me. I gagged and coughed it up. When I saw how thick it was, I recognized that I was in trouble.

I could hear Mama screaming now, but her hysteria made her words hard to understand.

Big Mama came up and put a towel over the crater in my torso before she kneeled beside me. I believe she wanted to touch me, but her hands shook in mid-air. Her face seemed to melt into one big tear as she rocked back and forth.

“Here...here, baby...you gon' be okay. Lord, he gonna be okay...Lord, I cain't take another one...You save him, Lord...You save him 'cause I'm askin'!...and I ain't done nothing but right by you! I ain't done nothin' to deserve losin' my son and my grandson! You owes me, so you repay me now! You saves my baby!”

Henry, Ray, and Brian came in the doorway and slammed it behind them. Henry was the first to get a good look at me.

“Oh no...no...God...”

“CALL AN AMBULANCE!” SaTia screamed through her tears.

Ray already had his cell phone out, but sirens were coming down the street before he even pressed a button.

I only remember flashes after that. My memories turned into strobe lights. Being put on a stretcher, lying face down in a field, being in an ambulance, picking cotton seeds out of my fingernails, rushing through the hospital, aiming a rifle through my tears, all of it went by like a blurry movie with bad sound. The last flash was of SaTia, with makeup melting down her face, praying on the right side of my bed. My dad was on the left side, doing the same thing. Then everything went dark.

PART TWO

7

I
t felt as if someone had stuck an adrenaline needle in my heart. My head jerked up so fast from being facedown in the dirt that it threw me onto my back. I scrambled around, using my hands and feet to propel me, for about ten seconds before I realized I didn't know who I was running from. There was no one around me. In fact, there didn't seem to be anyone in the area at all. Just a big open field with golden grass and no shade.

I patted my chest lightly, expecting to be able to feel shredded clothes and flesh, but there was nothing there. No gunshot wounds. No blood. Nothing. I didn't have a scratch on me. It was as if I had dreamed it all.

“What the hell is goin' on?” I stood up as I spoke aloud.

The field stretched as far as I could see. There was nothing else around but grass and a scorching hot sun.

“SaTia? Ray? Brian? Henry? Where y'all at?”

I spoke but no one responded.

I began walking in an unknown direction. The sun was beating down against my body. When it gets this hot, your grill starts to give you cottonmouth. I could feel sweat gathering in my Air Force Ones and dripping down my face underneath my shades. I tried to wipe it away from my eyes and scratched my cheek with my pinky ring. My confusion took the sting away.

How had I gotten here? The last thing I remembered was lying
half-dead on a hospital bed. People don't get shot and then wake up in the middle of nowhere with the sun cooking their hair grease. I stopped and looked around again. Scanning all around me, again, all I could see were fields.

“Well, it's too hot to be heaven...” I said aloud. “And too peaceful to be hell. And I'm not Catholic, so this can't be purgatory. Where am I?”

I continued to walk through the field. After a while, I quit trying to wipe the sweat away from my face and dealt with the sting of it in my eyes. My white tee was completely soaked and I had puddles in my Nikes. It got harder to put one foot in front of the other, and my path through the field began to zig-zag like a piece of artwork done by a two-year-old.

Maybe this is hell
... I began to think as I staggered from left to right. Before I could finish the thought, I was back on the ground again.

“SATIA!” I screamed out as I rolled around on the ground. “BRIAN, HENRY, RAY...WHAT'S GOING ON?”

I began reaching out for something—clawing at the ground as if it would somehow provide me with an answer to my question. When I stopped, I considered lying there and letting whatever was going to happen to me play itself out. Then I remembered... I'm Da Nigga. I don't lay down for nothing.

The thought itself wasn't strong enough to get me back up to my feet, so I began repeating it aloud.

“I'm...Da...Nigga,” I coughed out as I got up to my knees. “I don't...lie down...for nothing.”

As I swayed back and forth on my feet, I forced myself to begin thinking rationally.

I'll probably pass out in a few minutes,
I thought.
I might as well get as far as I can get before I go down for good.

I could barely lift my head, but I took a step, and then another, and then one more. By the time I got to nine or ten, I lifted my head, expecting to still see an eternity of fields. Instead I saw a road. It looked like one of the back country roads that people have on their farms—as if someone had cleared all the grass and plants out of the way, but forgot to put down any pavement. I didn't care, though. A road meant that someone would be coming by sooner or later. They'd recognize me and get me back to some type of civilization.

By the time I reached the road, I could vaguely see something approaching in the distance. My vision was blurred from all the sweat that had found its way into my eyes, so I wasn't surprised when the figure began to look more like a horse than a car.

“I'm trippin',” I said aloud as I began to wave down the car.

“Yo, yo, I need some help! Yo, stop the car, man! I need some help! I don't even know where the hell I am, dogg! You gotta help me!”

There was something wrong with the car's engine. As it pulled up, it sounded like some type of animal. Even with blurred vision, I could tell I had never seen any car like this before. And it stunk.

“Yo, what's wrong with your....never mind, man. You got any water?”

I took off my shades and wiped my eyes with the back of my hands. Before I put the shades back on, I looked up. There were two horses in front of me, with two white guys on them that looked as if they were straight out of an old Western movie.

“Wow,” I said, looking at the men, then at the horses, then back at them.

Before I could say another word, the first guy hit me in the mouth with a rifle butt. I fell to the ground, stunned.

“Where you come from, nigger?” The shorter of the two men
jumped off of his horse and walked up to me. The taller one, the one who'd hit me with the gun, did the same.

My mind was going eighty miles per hour. So these country rednecks obviously knew me, or at least knew my stage name. Maybe they were hired by the P. Silenzas. Maybe they were the ones who'd somehow gotten me out of the hospital and over here to No Man's Land. Whatever the case, they had guns and I didn't. This wasn't the time to be acting gangsta.

“Aight, look, fellas,” I said as I started to get back up. It took longer than usual, considering how weak I already was. By the time I got back to my feet, the right side of my mouth was dripping blood onto the dirt. “There's obviously been some kinda misunderstandin'. Ain't no need for the guns, though. Look, whatever the Silenzas is payin' y'all, I'll double it. You know I got more money than them niggas. Just take me to the nearest bank, let me pay y'all off, and we'll pretend like none of this ever happened, aight?”

I looked both of them in the eye, waiting for a response. What I got was another gun butt to my mouth. I felt a tooth come loose when I hit the ground.

“Yo, what's your problem, man? What's wrong with you?”

The shorter one slowly walked up to me, observed me for about three seconds, and then kicked me in the side of my head.

I couldn't have gotten back up if I'd tried. I could barely open my eyes. Pain radiated through my skull as I began to drift in and out of consciousness.

“Looks like we got ourselves an uppity nigger here, Mr. Talbert.” The tall one who'd hit me with the gun spit as he spoke.

My vision was going from different shades of purple to pitch black. I listened as well as I could in between consciousness.

“Yes, we do. But he's strange, though. Look at all this stuff he's
got on, Bradley. Looks like something out of a child's nightmare.” He stopped and used his foot to turn me over, and I plopped onto my back like a ragdoll. Eventually, he shrugged his shoulders.