Chameleon (21 page)

Our eyes lit up. Dang! Twenty bucks? Why didn’t we find him earlier? We could’ve eaten like kings.

Lorenzo palmed the bill and shoved it in his pocket. Dayshaun did the same with his wad of bills and slid back to the concrete, taking the roach of a joint between two fingers, holding it like a tiny bug.

The bookend on the far right coughed out a cloud and said, “Ay, what about Tameka? Over on Stockwell? She gotta big ole Jell-O booty I wanna make jiggle!”

Our laughter echoed off the walls and into the park.

“Yeah . . . but that face! UGGH! That’s a double-bagger right there,” Dayshaun said, puckering his lips like he just ate a sour lemon.

The four of us looked at each other as if to say, “Double-bagger?”

But our unspoken question was answered when the five of them said in stereo, “One for her and one for you!” Soul claps and a downpour of giggles followed.

We laughed too but didn’t know what we were laughing at. A voice called out from the park, ending the joke.

“Who dat?”

Nine heads spun around and before anybody could speak, a pair of Pirus were running onto the handball court.

Uh-oh.

Me, Andre, Lorenzo, and Trent looked at each other and froze. None of us was in red or blue. Still . . . Crips plus Pirus equals . . .

“Let’s go!” Lorenzo shouted.

Two more Pirus ran up from the other side, and before we knew it, red was chasing blue off the handball court and onto the center of the basketball court. We hustled behind the rec room — the perfect place to see but not be seen.

“Aww, man! This ain’t cool! What we gonna do?” Trent said, bouncing around.

“I ’on’t know. But I do know we got to get out of here before somebody sees us,” I said.

Before we could say another word, red rushed from the left, blue from the right, but unlike paint, together they didn’t make purple. A cut-down golf club held by red swung down upon an L.A. Dodger blue cap, knocking the owner to the ground. More fists and clubs followed, bringing blood and agony. The brutha we just watched blow weed smoke and talk about getting together with Kendra from Grape Street was throwing wild punches at a short, squat, plug of a brutha dressed in black khakis and a red tank top. My vision zoomed out from the ridges on his red tank top to a wide shot of red-and-blue chaos. Silver beams of light shot through the color as cut-down clubs gleamed in the sun like sparks flying when metal scrapes metal.

My lungs released hungry breaths. My heart pulsed my sweat-soaked gray T-shirt against my chest as my legs rattled with nervous energy.

“Lorenzo, you seen yo’ brother?” Trent said.

Lorenzo shook his head, then ran to look out the back of the rec room and saw nothing. Trent and Andre raised their hands to shade their eyes as they stepped out of our hiding place to get a better look.

“What y’all
doing
?” I whispered.

They were a good step in front of me and could easily be seen.

“Somebody’s gonna see us.”

“Relax, Shawnie-Shawn, we just gettin’ a better look. They ain’t even thinking about us,” Andre said.

He tossed the ball back and forth in his hands as fast as he could. I guess I wasn’t the only nervous one. Lorenzo ran up from the back to get a better look, except —

“Dang, Lorenzo . . . see what you did?!”

What Lorenzo “did” was bump Andre, making the ball bounce out of his hands and roll onto the grass, about a free throw away from the court.

Andre ran out to get the ball as tires screeched to a stop in front of the park. He hustled back as five Pirus jumped out. The four Crips were now outnumbered by nine Pirus with cut-down clubs.

“What we gone do now?” Trent said.

“Lorenzo . . . ain’t that your brother?” I said, pointing in the direction of two Crips and a dude in black beating down the short, squat Piru.

“Shoot . . . Dayshaun!”

The words leaked out of Lorenzo’s mouth as we watched Dayshaun get yanked up by two Pirus. In slow motion, four hands grabbed him, lifted him up, and raised him high into the sky. Then everything sped up as they rammed his back down into the blacktop, squeezing the air out of his lungs and making him scream, “UNNNGHHH!”

“Y’all see that? They ain’t playin’! Who knows what they gonna do to him. We gotta go help him out.”

“Lorenzo, are you crazy? Those are Crips and Pirus beating the crap out of each other on the court. Did that escape your vision?”

“I don’t care, Shawn. I ain’t go stand here and watch my brother get beat up,” he huffed. “That’s my BROTHER!”

With that, Lorenzo rushed out to help Dayshaun.

“Lorenzo, what’s wrong with you?” I yelled.

“Lorenzo, are you crazy?” Trent shouted.

Andre turned to me and Trent and said, “We can’t let him go out there alone.”

Andre looked at Trent. The two of them looked at me. They seemed to have their minds made up. I didn’t and they could see the fear in my eyes as they waited for me to join them. I felt like I was standing on a cliff about a mile high and had to jump. No ifs, ands, or maybes; I
had
to jump. I couldn’t turn around; there was no other way down. I didn’t know what to do, but they were like my brothers, and like Lorenzo said, I couldn’t stand there and watch my brother get beat up, so — I leaped.

We raced out of the calm of the rec room into the chaos on the court for Dayshaun and Lorenzo. As my sneakers scraped the blacktop, I counted all the bodies and we were even: nine on nine. Their nine had clubs, but at least we had nine bodies. The ball watched from the grass as we rushed over to help ’Zo pull the Pirus off his brother. Their red sneakers sent swift kicks into his body as Dayshaun lay on the ground trying to cover himself. Each swing of a shoe brought rib cracks and meaty thuds. ’Zo reached in to grab his brother, but one of the Pirus got ahold of him from behind while another Piru slammed a punch into ’Zo’s gut, dropping him like a sack of bricks to the ground. Me, Trent, and ’Dre rushed in to help Dayshaun too; a club swung down on Trent’s back, Andre took a punch to the face that knocked him down, and I reached in for Dayshaun’s legs but my right eye caught a punch. Stars danced in front of me, and it felt like my eye was being pushed back into my brain. A club swing to my gut came next and laid me out on the blacktop like everybody else. Cough — can’t . . . breathe.

“This don’t concern y’all!”

Two Pirus grabbed Dayshaun again. The sound of muscles being tenderized pounded our eardrums and then . . . silence. The swinging stopped. The clubs stopped, and finally the fists stopped. A Jheri-curled Piru shadowed Dayshaun and crouched down over his beaten body.

“It’s county day, podna! I know you got somethin’ for me . . . right?”

He jabbed his hands into Dayshaun’s front pockets and pulled out the wad of bills. The same wad that at one time held the twenty that was now in Lorenzo’s pocket to get us some food.

I tried to catch my breath from the heat of the blacktop. Everything was blurry in my right eye, but my ears worked fine and heard:

“I tole you ’bout coming up on my spot. Ain’t no poaching going on here, podna . . . YOU HEAR ME!”

He stuffed the wad of bills in his front pocket, then raised his knee to the sky and smashed his foot down onto Dayshaun’s right wrist, crushing the bone into the blacktop like a cockroach beneath a heel. A horror-movie scream leaped from the bottom of Dayshaun’s lungs and pierced our ears with his pain.

“Yeah, we’ll see how you sling with a broken wing, PODNA!”

From my snake’s-eye view with my one good eye, I inched my head up to see what happened. Bloodred bled over blue bandannas and blacktop as nine scattered souls littered the court like trash. The hyenas cackled into the distance, and in the blink of a swollen eye, they were gone.

“WHAT HAPPENED?”

Who said that? My ears heard the words before my eyes were open to see the face.
Slap!

“Hey!”

“I was just trying to get you up, young blood.”

Who’s slapping me in the face? I tried to blink my eyes open, but only my left eye moved. I tried to sit up, but my stomach was in a world of pain and held me down.

“Do I know you?”

All I could make out was a big shadow hovering over me with a hand reaching for my right eye.

“Wooo! That’s a real shiner you got there!” the voice said. “You don’t know me, but I see you boys playing ball around here all the time.”

I coughed as I rose, then reached to touch my eye. The hand stopped me.

“Don’t touch it. It ain’t pretty, but you’ll be fine. Just your standard-issue black eye, young blood,” the voice said.

Young blood? I’ve heard that before. My memory kicked into gear and flicked back to Trent: butterfly kick . . . young blood . . . Black Bruce!

“Black Bruce?” snuck out of my lips.

“Is that what y’all call me?” He laughed.

I was embarrassed to say that to his face.

“Hey . . . I can dig it. Y’all must like Bruce Lee. I get it. Name’s Herbert — you can call me Herb. One of your boys was watching me practice earlier. I came back to get in a little more work before the sun went down and saw all you young bloods just lying on the court.” He pointed around the court. “What happened?”

“Crips . . . Pirus . . .” tumbled out.

“Say no more.”

He helped me to my feet. Pockets of pain filled my stomach. I stumbled as I tried to focus out of one eye. I was the last one up. The sounds of pain hovered over us as I saw everyone clutching at different body parts. Dayshaun sat on the grass nearby, cradling his wrist like an infant, his black leather belt balled up and clenched between his teeth to fend off the pain. His eyes had that look like Master’s right before he went on his revenge-filled rampage.

Lorenzo stood, hunched over and holding his stomach. His breathing could be heard a mile away. Trent lay silent on his back on the grass, staring at the sky. Andre sat inches away, carefully wiggling his jaw back and forth with his hand. The four Crips sat silent on the court. Two of them covered their noses with bandannas and held them high to keep more blood from spilling onto the court. The other two dabbed at different spots on their faces, cursing each time the bandanna touched a wound.

“Man, what them ’rus run up on us fo’ like that?” one of the Crips said, jamming his bandanna into his back pocket as he stood.

“I ’on’t know, but somebody gone catch one for this. Oh, yeah! Payback is a bitch!” another Crip said, lowering his head to spit clots of blood.

I felt my way to the grass with Black Bruce — I mean Herb — following close behind.

“You young bloods better get to the hospital or something, ’cause it looks like a train just ran over all y’all,” he said.

“Man, who are you?” one of the Crips asked, lowering the bandanna over his nose pointed to the sky.

Trent gave the reply: “Thas Black Bruce.”

Herbert laughed but corrected him: “My name’s Herb. I found all you guys laid out on the court here.”

All eyes focused on him and nodded thanks.

Lorenzo stood upright and approached his brother. “Dayshaun, you gotta go to the hospital, man. I heard that bone crunch all the way from where I was. We could call an ambulance or . . .”

Dayshaun spit the belt out of his mouth and groaned, “No ambulance! Pop’s gonna kill me if he finds out. I’ll handle this myself.”

His breath came in quick bursts as he gathered himself up and inched his way over to the Crips. “Let’s go.”

He turned back to Herbert and said between teeth clenches, “Thanks for your help, chief, but I’ll take it from here. They got a car.” He paused in pain and finished, “I’ll have ’em take me and just drop me off.” A grin crept across his face as he said, “It’s a shame I broke my wrist playing basketball.”

“Look here, young bloods,” Herb said, turning to watch Dayshaun and the Crips hobble away, “it ain’t nunna my business, but what y’all doing hanging out with Crips?”

My right eye was swollen shut and it was still hard to see with one eye, but I noticed that a gray beard graced his face and gray streaks ran through his short-cropped hair. He was tall: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in
Game of Death
tall. And skinny. A dark brown tracksuit hung over his frame with a large black Chinese character peeking out from a white T-shirt showing beneath the jacket. His feet sported black kung-fu slippers.

“My brother . . .” Lorenzo started, “he was the one in black, and he knew the Crips that were with him. Unfortunately”— he hung his head —“I guess he knows some Pirus too.”

Herbert echoed the words we’ve all heard over the years: “Pirus plus Crips equals trouble. Y’all know that, right?”

“Yeah, we know, we know,” Lorenzo said, pausing before he finished his train of thought, “but Dayshaun, my brother, was getting beat down, and I couldn’t just stand there and watch.”

“I can dig it. I can dig it,” Herbert said, stroking the long gray strands in his beard before adding, “That takes guts — mixing it up with the Crips and Pirus like that.”

Andre added, “We couldn’t let him go in alone, so we jumped in too.”

“You know why your brother was catchin’ a beat-down?” Herbert asked.

Lorenzo stood up, pulled the twenty out of his sweatshirt pocket, and said, “This.”