Hyena (12 page)

I pretend like I don’t hear him and keep walking. The phone rings. “Jude, what the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m looking for the alley. Ain’t no fucking alley!”

I can feel their eyes on me.

“Just calm down, son. You in the hood.”

“No shit, I’m in the hood.”

I get back in the car and he tells me where I need to go. It’s the alley behind his house. It looks like where Ricky got shot in
Boyz n the Hood,
but way shittier with stray cats and more trash.

He’s outside waiting, a big bald dude with a mustache. He don’t look nothing like Jinx. I follow him through the back of his house.

“Welcome to my crib, Angelini, it ain’t that big but it’s mine. We doing the best we can.” It looks like your typical hood house, pit bull puppies and dirty dishes in the sink. I walk through the kids’ room; they got the bunk beds and computer desk pushed up on each other with a flat-screen wedged in the corner on top of the dresser. They’re watching cartoons. “Ay, y’all, meet Rude Jude, this the man we listen to on the radio when you get home from school.” They say hello, I barely even look at them, just mumble a hi. I’m still shook from running up on them gangbangers in the dark of the night.

We go into his living room; it’s cramped. He’s got an armchair with a TV tray in front with Hennessy on top, a digital scale, and some Newport 100s. Next to it’s a love seat pushed against the wall. On the other wall he’s got the giant sixty-inch flat-screen from the nineties, faded picture with the big speaker underneath. The Clippers are playing. I sit in the love seat.

“Welcome, my man, welcome. This where I live, dude, shit is crazy out here. This the motherfuckin’ hood, Jude.”

“Yeah, man, I could tell. I met your neighbors.”

“Jude, them boys are wild, but they good wit me. They my
lil killers if I need something.” He pulls out a cigarette but doesn’t light it. He’s shaking his head. “Boy, this shit out here, my nig? It’s like another world. Look at this shit right here; this shit happened just this morning in my backyard. This my house, dude.”

He’s pointing to the computer screen on the other side of the armchair. It has six tiny boxes, surveillance from all over the house. He’s clicking shit with his mouse.

The screen shows his backyard with four cholos standing there; they’re just chilling. Three circle the one in the red shirt; you see him tense up. They rush him, they’re punching him in the head, he bangs into the fence, he falls down. They’re on him, he scrambles to his feet. They’re swinging wild catching him in his face, he’s fighting back, blood’s pouring out his nose.

Solo lights his cig. “This eleven today, dog, in the morning, look at this shit! This the Forty-Second Street Gang, so he gotta get busted in his head forty-two times before it’s over.”

“How do they know when they’re done?”

“You can’t see it but there’s a bitch in the corner with a clicker counting. . . . Oooh look at him, he’s leaking!”

It’s going on forever; it feels like he got hit way more than forty-two times. I’m thinking, good thing he don’t live on Ninety-Eighth Street. Shit, good thing I don’t live down here. I know I’m not tough, but this is just a reminder of how soft I really am. I just want him to turn this shit off.

Solo’s face is in the screen, “Hold up, hold up. I wanna see the bald-headed cat get knocked!!”

Red Shirt’s bleeding everywhere, but he’s still fighting back. Baldy swings, loses his footing, and runs his jaw dead into Red Shirt’s right hook. His head snaps back, his body goes limp, he crumbles. They stop fighting, the other two drag Baldy away. An OG walks in from offscreen with a chick. She hands him a towel to clean up and gives him a hug.

I say, “He’s got heart.”

Solo takes a drag off his Newport. “He’s in the gang now.”

I nod. “He’s in the gang all right.”

Solo pulls out a tiny vial filled with gold liquid and hands it to me. “Here you go, Jude, Gorilla Piss, formaldehyde. Open it, smell that shit. Stink right?”

I do, it does.

“What you gonna do is, you dip a cigarette in that shit, let it leak all the way up, then you smoke that shit. Just make sure you in a comfortable environment around some people you trust cuz this sherm boy . . . I’m telling you.”

“I’ll prolly just do it with a chick and fuck.”

“That’s cool, this shit’ll make you wanna beat the breaks off the pussy. Just don’t even tell her it’s on the cigarette, let her hit it first. Then you hit it. Get her fucked-up. It’ll be like a surprise.”

I look at him like he’s crazy. “I ain’t gonna surprise no girl with sherm, have her bugging out in my crib, breaking shit.”

“Whatever, do what you wanna do. But this shit turns you straight gorilla! And just be around some good people that ain’t gon’ judge you cuz you might end up buck naked.”

“Solo, you be doing this shit?”

“Me? Nah, not in like ten years since I had my youngins. I had to go to rehab off this shit, so be careful.”

I get up to leave, I tell him about the mushrooms, tell him to go hit a park about a half hour away, get with nature. He looks at me like I’m nuts. “Man, I ain’t going to no woods! I’m finna stay right here in the hood and trip out. Soak ’em in cognac and bug out off the floor, like I’m in a boat.”

I give Solo a pound and a bear hug, then get in my car and drive off. I sing along with Prince, but it comes out a whisper.

I’m thinking about who I can do my drugs with. All the chicks I’m fucking with right now are in AA. And none of my homeboys are dumb enough to do it with me. So the sherm’s still sitting where I put it when I got home, in my refrigerator door, right next to the mustard.

I’M SPREAD-EAGLE ON THE CHEROKEE
, palms on the roof. They’re running through my pockets throwing their hands up my ass crack, on my balls. Asking where we been, where we’re going. Dont’s next to me, answering questions. Jinx and Myron are on the other side of the Jeep getting the same treatment.

We’re trying to go to Canada but we can’t even get out of Pontiac. Getting fucked with by the police is nothing new. We’ve spent many a night sitting on the curb watching the cops rifle through our shit; tearing up our cars. Bust our chops over a blunt-roach or weed stem, then let us go. Sometimes they even plant something on ya—did Jinx like that when he was out with a chick. Put a twenty-dollar rock on his seat, then arrested him. Court ordered him to attend NA meetings.

They don’t find anything. We’re clean. We’re telling these guys the truth. We’re trying to go gig in Canada. Me and Dont aren’t old enough to get into half the bars out here and you
only gotta be like nineteen to drink there. They fuck with us a little while longer then let us go.

It’s then we decide that maybe I should drive, cuz I’m white and the cops’ll be less likely to fuck with us if a white guy’s driving. So we’re speeding down I-75 trying to get to Windsor before the bars close. And the whole time they’re talking shit about what a lousy driver I am.

It’s the truth. I’m the worst. My old man tried to teach me stick on his Chevette, but I kept stalling out, running up on curbs. And he’d be in the passenger seat, freaking out, screaming on me. For good reason: that Chevette was the only car he had and he couldn’t afford for me to wreck it. So he stopped with the lessons and I just waited till I turned eighteen, took the written test, and got a license.

I kind of learned how to drive from video games. I thought the more I swerve in and outta traffic and the faster I go—the better I am at driving. So we’re gunning it down the freeway, Big Mike banging in the stereo, Jinx riding shotgun and he’s leaning out the window trying to holler at a carload of girls driving next to us.

They speed off. I chase ’em. We’re going ninety. They exit on Mack and I keep driving. It’s a quarter past one and we gotta make it to the club before they close.

Ninety on the freeway isn’t that fast. But it is fast when the highway goes from 70 to 35, due to a sharp curve to the right that dumps you off on Jefferson. That’s just what this freeway does, and I didn’t see this, cuz I’m busy trying to chase women and impress my friends.

Dont and Myron see it first and they’re yelling, “Jude, Jude! Watch the turn!”

I look back at ’em, then look at the road and I’m at the turn before I even know it. I get it down to sixty but we’re still skidding off the freeway. They’re hollering in the backseat. Big Mike’s still banging. I look at Jinx. He shakes his head, says, “Smash.” I cut the wheel back toward the median and we flip.

I leave my body for a second. I’m hovering over my shoulder watching it happen, watching us roll and roll. Then it feels like I got hit in the head with a cinder block. Then it goes black.

It’s peaceful.

I wake up to Dont smacking me on my face; my head’s dangling out the driver-side window. “Jude, wake up, man! Jude! Wake up!”

I come to. He opens up the door. I stagger out, blood leaking out of my head. I collapse on the side of the road. His Cherokee’s back on all four tires but it’s demolished—roof caved in, speaker box coming out the back, all the windows shattered.

I say, “Shit, Dont, I’m sorry about your car, man. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t even worry about it. You good?”

“I’m straight. How I look?”

My pants and shirt’s all ripped up. I got all types of blood coming out of me. He says, “You look good, cuz, you look good.”

“Is everybody else good?”

“Yeah, we okay.”

“Shit, where’s my pager?” I look down at my legs. “Man, I fucked up my Hilfigers!” I look up and see Myron’s got three girls who must’ve walked down from the projects tending to his wounds. “Where my fuckin’ girls at? Tell one of them bitches to come over here!”

When the ambulance comes they take me to Detroit Receiving. I sit in the holding room for hours, waiting for an X-ray. They said I might’ve broke my neck. I’m next to a bum who smells like liquor and piss and week-old dick. He keeps yelling for his catheter to be changed. Across from me is a black kid with a gunshot wound, handcuffed to a gurney. He don’t say nothing.

Jinx, Myron, and Dont are bedside talking shit.

“Jude, you sposed to drive on the wheels of the car. Not on top of that bitch!”

“I’m sayin’! You can’t drive for shit! You the fuckin’ pits, dog!”

“Ay for real! Get better and all that, but I swear to God, nigga, I ain’t even getting on a skateboard witcho ass!”

We’re laughing but I’m trying not to laugh too hard, cuz I’m afraid I might break my neck some more.

My dad shows up, he’s got a disposable camera from Kmart. He’s all upset. He’s in my grill taking pictures.

I tell him, “Get that shit out my fuckin’ face.”

“Fuck that, you’re gonna remember this, what you did to yaself!” And he’s back in my face snapping.

X-rays come back. I got a hangman’s fracture; C-2 and C-3
vertebrae are cracked. Doc says it’s one of those “Supposed to die” injuries. Said I was a cunt hair away from being dead or crippled, pissing myself, driving around in a wheelchair using a straw.

They give me the Halo-Vest. I’m halfway sedated when they do it. I can feel them shaving my head. I can feel the razor going over the open wounds, catching the glass embedded in my skull and pulling it out. Every stroke I can feel it. There’s a lot of glass. I can feel them screwing the posts into my skull, in my forehead and behind my temples. It feels like my head’s in a vise and they keep tightening it. I’m writhing and moaning.

I hear the sweet words of a nurse telling me, “It’s okay, honey, it’s gonna be okay.” And she’s stroking my hand.

I go home the next day. I’m staying at my grandparents’. People come to see me the first week, I get a lot of visitors. After a while, it dwindles. I’m not mad. That’s what happens when you get sick or go to jail. People care about you, but life goes on, they gotta live it. You don’t fit in theirs anymore.

Chicks I was fucking cut me off and my homeboys disappeared.

A month in I’m so bored, I’m going crazy. All I do is listen to books on tape and old radio shows from the forties:
Fibber McGee and Molly,
that kind of shit. I start trying to seduce my nurse, I try to get her to wash my dick in the shower. She does once, which is cool except for the fact she’s a forty-five-year-old, 250-pound black lady. It’s more like getting my dick washed by Tyler Perry than anything else.

I just need to get out the house. I need to be somewhere,
anywhere that’s not the doctor’s office or my grandma’s. So I start bugging my dad to take me to go see
Batman and Robin
when it comes out. It’s kind of a big deal. This is back in the day before every goddamn week they dropped a comic book movie. This shit would happen like once a year, maybe.

I’m like, “Pop, we gotta go hit that new
Batman
when it comes out.”

He looks at me. “Whataya fuckin’ crazy? Ya neck’s broke. What if we’re out there and ya get hit and ya can’t use your legs anymore?”

“Man, ain’t nobody gonna hit me!”

“Look atcha. You got all of this shit comin’ outta ya head. Ya look like fuckin’ Robocop. Someone could hit ya on accident and bam! Ya crippled.”

“Pop, I’m good! Nothing bad’s gonna happen. I just wanna see George Clooney, man.”

“You never even watched
ER;
you don’t like Clooney! I’m not taking ya. If we drive there and get in a wreck, ya dead! I’m not taking ya, that’s it. Okay Robocop?”

I stayed on him for two weeks till he folded. Opening night, me, him, and Rachel, we drove crosstown all the way to the Star Theater in Rochester to see it. We left an hour and a half early just so we could be the first people in line, so we could sit in the handicap seats. The whole drive over, it’s like driving through a minefield. Every car that passes us—he’s cussing at ’em; every intersection—he’s freaking out, looking for stray cars that might be running red lights, that might run into us. He just doesn’t want me to die. Rachel and I could give a shit.

We’re the first ones there. First in line. Eating our popcorn, feeling good. I’m out, baby, I’m out.

Pop’s still stressed. “Look, when they take the tickets, walk as fast as you can and grab the handicaps. Okay? I don’t want anybody fucking bumpin’ ya, makin’ ya worse.”