One Blood (11 page)

He touched the papers hanging on the wall. One article showed a picture of a smiling face, obviously a yearbook photo, posted next to a mug shot of the same face. Although the pictures were taken many years prior, Lincoln looked pretty much the same. He’d accumulated more tattoos on his fair skin since his incarceration, but by and large he was like a meat-filled refrigerator left off too long—same appearance on the outside, but utterly ruined within.

He stood up and approached the dented rusty piece of reflective glass—a joke of a mirror. Removing his sweatshirt, he applied shaving foam to his two-day stubble and took a slightly used bic razor to his face. As always, he contemplated taking the blade to his jugular, but it had been many years since he’d seriously considered suicide. Instead, after shaving, he examined the black skull with blood descending from both eyes inked on the muscled bulge of his right shoulder—the insignia of his gang, the Dirty Skulls.

Only two people in the world knew about the nasty scar beneath his first tattoo. The man who’d burned the five-year-old orphan in his charge with a soldering gun, and Lincoln. As he grew older, Lincoln covered many of his visible childhood scars this way. Fascinated with reptiles, especially snakes, he saw each tattoo as a piece of new skin. But the tattoo just below the skull that read R.I.P. K.L. #44 was a daily reminder that the deepest wounds could never be shed.

Lincoln thought about Kristopher Lafitte constantly. Even though he was ten years removed from the events that resulted in the death of his best friend, he couldn’t erase the guilt he felt for what he did and what he failed to do. The left side of the wallpaper reminded him of a time before the death and sadness. Back when the media depicted Lincoln as a basketball god.

After his sentencing for the killings at Simmons Park, no one uttered a word about his bright future. Only words like gangbanger, juvenile delinquent, drug dealer, cop killer, and murderer were used to describe him now. The papers went from singing his praises to exposing his criminal past—starting with a convenience store robbery when he was eight. They described his upbringing, moving from the orphanage to foster home after foster home because no parents or blood relatives would claim him. They listed his many stints in juvenile detention centers. Their words damned him with the same question.

Why?

Lincoln had no answers for them. His adjudicators took his silence for guilt and condemned him to life behind bars. Infamy followed him from the streets into the cell, and Lincoln began to examine his life with the avid interest of a coroner probing a mutilated corpse for clues.

His morbid curiosity became so great he broke down the wall of silence between himself and Moses Mouton, the man who’d given him the only real break of his life. To the outside world, Moses was a civil rights activist and devoted preacher. To Lincoln, Moses was the father he never had. Ironically, Moses had spent twelve years locked up in this very prison.

* * * * *

Lincoln was looking at four years in juvenile detention for two counts of armed robbery when he learned a deal had been reached and he’d been sentenced to house arrest. Lincoln was sure the judge had made a mistake—how could he be on house arrest when he’d been living in the streets for the past two years?

The mystery was soon solved. The bailiff led him to a holding cell where a large, black man sat behind the table. He had the biggest hands Lincoln had ever seen and was reading a book called Native Son.

Lincoln thought it was some shit about Africa.

The man kept reading for a few moments, then lowered the book and looked at Lincoln like he’d just realized someone else was in the room.

“
Good, you’re here. Have a seat, Son,” the man said.

“
Who the fuck are you?” Lincoln replied, still standing.

The guard grabbed the tip of his billy club.

It’s okay, Hardy,” the man said to the guard. “Would you mind standing outside?” After the guard left the room, the man looked at Lincoln and said, “My name is Moses. Moses Mouton. I’m the reason you’re here and not headed for juvenile detention.”

“
Yo’ name Moses? Like in the Bible Moses?”

“
Exactly…I see you know the Bible.”

“
Not really, Bruh, I saw that Charlton Heston movie. Whatcha mean you the reason I ain’t goin’ to juvie?”

“
I told the judge I would make sure he never heard your name again in connection with gang activity. I’m here to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

“
Whateva man, I don’t make no deals, already told the damn prosecutor that.”

“
This isn’t a deal, Lincoln,” Moses replied. “This is your last chance.”

“
Last chance for what, nigga? I’m a dead man. I walk outta here and the Skulls’ll think I ratted ‘em out. What kinda offer you got fo’ a dead man?”

“
Please don’t use that n-word around me. In addition to protection from your gang, I’m offering you something that I never had. I was just like you, Son.”

“
Let’s get one thing straight, Bruh, you ain’t nuthin’ like me,” Lincoln interrupted, getting up from his seat. “I don’t got time fo’ dis shit.”

“
And that’s exactly what I used to say,” Moses said, standing up as well, the book gripped in his hand like a Bible. “I liked selling drugs, using drugs, and even robbing people. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t a minor when I got my last chance and they sent me up to Angola for twelve years. I was raised on these streets, just like you. My folks passed away when I was very young and my grandmother could never keep up with me—”

“
Look man, what all this shit got to do wit’ me?”

“
I’m trying to tell you why I want to help you, Lincoln. I’m trying to tell you why that white judge is entrusting you into my care. Listen carefully to me, Lincoln, because I’m only going to say this once.” Moses took a deep breath and sat back down.

Something in his eyes made Lincoln sit, too.

“
Nobody has ever given a damn about you, Son. Nobody really gives a damn about any of our youth. You may not even give a damn about yourself, and that judge is more than willing to get one more thug off of the streets, so you’re helping him out with your attitude. Now I told myself after I got released from prison that I would not and could not let my black brothers and sisters keep disappearing down the garbage disposal. I have a responsibility to you, and you have a responsibility to God not to squander the opportunities He’s giving you to change your life. So here’s the deal: you are going to be living with me from now on, you are going to obey your house arrest, you are going to go back to high school, and you are going to make something of yourself. And if you don’t, that gang you run with will be the least of your troubles. I may be a man of the Lord, but I’ll kill you myself…”

Moses did not mince words.

The terms of Lincoln’s house arrest stated that he was only allowed to leave Moses’ house to attend high school. The Dirty Skulls’ rival gang, the Scorpions, took advantage of the opportunity, using Moses’ home for target practice on several occasions. Each time, Moses locked Lincoln in the bathroom until he calmed down; but one night Lincoln snuck out of his bedroom window, looking to settle the score.

After cruising through the Scorpions’ hood for a couple of hours, he returned to Moses’ home to find the windows to his bedroom locked. With no other choice, Lincoln went around to the front door and boldly rang the doorbell. After a moment the door swung open.

Moses pulled Lincoln into the house by the front of his t-shirt and threw him down into a dining room chair. A rubber-gripped, silver-barreled .357 Magnum revolver lay on the kitchen table before him.

“
Pick it up.”

Lincoln stared at the gun and back up at Moses.

“
I said, pick the gun up.”

Lincoln reached for the weapon.

Moses grabbed his hand before he could grasp it. “When you pick it up, you either shoot me or shoot yourself, you hear?”

“
I—,” Lincoln started.

“
I don’t want to hear anything but you clicking back the safety and a gunshot. Make your choice.” He released Lincoln’s hand.

Lincoln reluctantly jerked the weapon up. He tried to speak, but nothing came. He held the weapon in front of him with shaking hands.

“
You want to kill somebody so bad, pull the trigger.”

Lincoln’s senses were amplified. Moses’ Brut cologne was as omnipresent as the stench of his own fear. The ceiling fan in the living room was as loud as helicopter blades. Every pore on Moses’ livid face was apparent. Lincoln readjusted his grip.

“
What are you waiting for? Pull the trigger, big man.” Moses’ words came in slow motion.

Suddenly Lincoln was nine years old again, with an older gang member holding his hand up while he pulled the trigger. The gun was so heavy in his tiny hand; the recoil almost knocked him over. In the distance, a kid not much older than himself lay twisted on the ground.

He blinked the memory away and slammed Moses’ gun down on the table. “Fuck you, man! I don’t gotta do nuthin’ you say!” Lincoln screamed.

Moses picked up the firearm and walked around to Lincoln’s side of the table. He pressed the barrel to Lincoln’s temple.

Lincoln flinched.

Moses’ lips brushed against his earlobe. “You’ve got a death wish, Son. I’ll be doing you and everyone in this town a favor by putting a bullet in your head right now. You think you’re invincible?”

Lincoln swallowed hard. “You ain’t gonna shoot”

He was interrupted by the unmistakable click of the trigger being squeezed. It took Lincoln five seconds to realize he wasn’t dead. He had collapsed.

Moses stood over him and whispered, “Boom. Lincoln Baker the gangbanger is dead.”

* * * * *

The jingle-jangle of prison alarms dispersed Lincoln’s memories.

It was 4:45 a.m. Most of the other inmates would be leaving their cells to work the eighteen thousand acres of farmland surrounding Angola. Before the Louisiana State Penitentiary became America’s largest and most violent maximum-security prison, it was a plantation. The slaves that worked the land back then were from Angola in Africa.

Lincoln found it ironic that the ancestors of the slaves who originally toiled this land were still trying to get free. The statistics claimed that nearly ninety percent of Angola’s five thousand inmates would die inside the prison walls. On day one, Lincoln vowed he would never die inside this cage.

Now, it was almost time to fulfill his prophecy. Nothing could take his hope away. He’d survived ten years of twenty-three hour lockdown and near total isolation and was done being a slave. Before sleep could claim him, Lincoln thought of the victorious crow and muttered, “It’s my time to fly the coop.”

* * * * *

Chapter Fourteen

Four years earlier

1998

Angola, LA

“
Baker. You’ve got a visitor,” the guard said, as he approached Lincoln and two fellow inmates shooting basketball in the yard.

Lincoln swished a three-pointer. “Wasn’t expectin’ nobody.”

“
Well, someone’s expectin’ you. Bring your ass.”

Lincoln followed the guard through a succession of gates leading to the visitors camp. There was something oddly familiar about him. Just before they reached the visitors camp, the officer shoved Lincoln into a shadowy corridor between the buildings.

“
What the fuck?”

“
Shhh!” the guard hissed. “Shut the fuck up.”

Lincoln debated whether or not to break the hand pinning him to the wall. “Nigga…”

A deep voice greeted him from the shadows. “Hello, Lincoln.”

The guard released him and a moment later a tall, thin, dark-skinned man with short gray hair emerged from the darkness. He strolled toward Lincoln nonchalantly, as if he could walk out prison anytime he wanted.

Lincoln knew this man. Shit, everyone knew him. He was Angola’s most recent and most infamous resident—Panama X.

Lincoln sized him up. They were both dressed in standard prison attire, but Panama X wore his as if they were vacation clothes. Appearing much younger than his years, Panama X exuded an aura of power and self-control. Awareness blazed from the man’s one good eye; a patch covered the other.

Wonder how he got that?

Lincoln got an uneasy feeling as Panama X’s good eye analyzed him. He’d heard stories that Panama X was some sort of voodoo priest and worshiped the devil. Supposedly he could possess a man just by uncovering the patch on his bad eye. Lincoln didn’t know about all that, but kept a watchful eye on that patch, just in case.

Panama X looked over at the guard and smiled. “You were right, Amir, he does look just like his mother.”

“
What the fuck you just say?” Lincoln blurted.

Panama X continued to gaze at Lincoln in silence, as if he were seeing a ghost.

“
I understand that you’re new here,” Lincoln warned through gritted teeth. “But you might want to watch yo’ mu’fuckin’ mouth.”