Yaccub's Curse (25 page)

I walked behind him and sat down next to him staring out the window. I felt foolish. I knew I had just lost much of Huey’s valued respect. He didn’t look at me for the rest of the ride. Instead he stared at every white face on the bus challenging them with his eyes, daring them to return his contemptuous glare as if everyone of them had done him some personal wrong.

If only the whole race had one neck.

He had meant it. There was no doubt that he would murder every Caucasian in existence were it possible, including the half that was inside of him. That much hate just couldn’t be healthy.

Huey’s message would have affected me a little deeper if it wasn’t for the fact that he was such a cold-hearted killer himself. Even though he cried and poured out a little liquor for every brotha he killed it still seemed to me like the pot calling the kettle black. If he’d never killed another Black man and had only killed White people I might have bought his revolutionary stance, but I knew that the kid he’d pummeled back there was the first White person he’d ever done, but it wasn’t his first homicide. Still, my conscience was ringing and I couldn’t wait to numb it into silence with a couple of Colt 45s, a fat ass blunt and some of Yolanda’s talented head. I couldn’t wait to get away from Huey. It would be a long time before he and I kicked it again.

««—»»

The flames crawled down the Marijuana filled cigar, eating it slowly away as I sucked its senses-dampening vapors down into my lungs and tried to forget about my life. Yolanda wasn’t home so I had hooked up with Tank. I passed the forty to him and he tilted it up like it was Gatorade and he’d just finished a marathon.

Tank and I sat down in the playground of Lingelbach Elementary School where he and I had first met years ago. We didn’t speak, instead we indulged in that timeless male ritual sucking our emotions down into a dense fog of inebriation, down into the dark emotional chasm where every pain we’d ever endured festered. It was a reservoir that was far from infinite and would need to be emptied soon before it erupted violently outward. The cold bitter taste of the beer washed over my tongue and scrubbed away the faces of the vengeful dead. When the blunt was passed back to me I sucked it down to a roach. I was as high as I could get, but it wasn’t enough. I still couldn’t shake the depression I was in. Even Tank was looking uncharacteristically melancholy. Without any warning at all tears sprang to my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

I cracked open another forty and plugged it into my mouth trying to silence the sobs before they began. I nearly drowned myself as my sorrow took hold of me full force and shook me like a broken toy. Beer sprayed everywhere as I choked on my own grief. I hurled the bottle at the swings a few yards away and felt a little better somehow to hear it shatter.

“Hey, bro? Are you alright?”

“What tha fuck is we doin’, Tank? What tha fuck is we doin’?” The tears were flowing freely and my chest heaved with sobs. I wanted to destroy whatever it was that was making me hurt so bad. My hands balled into tight fists and my forearms bulged. I wanted to find the pain and beat it down the way Huey had beaten down that White kid. But it was deep inside of me where I couldn’t get to it.

“How tha fuck did we turn into monsters, Tank? We were kids! Just a bunch of fucking kids! How did we get this way? We’re murderers, man! We’re fucking monsters!”

Tank looked at me and for once that cynical look of amused disinterest had left his face. There was none of the boredom and apathy that had seemed to be carved into his features, a congenital characteristic as much a part of him as his blue-black skin. Now, incredibly, his face showed compassion and understanding. It was obvious that he would have rather not ever have had this conversation and was conceding to it only because he sensed I needed it. He sighed deeply and looked up at the darkening sky. Then he took another swig of malt liquor and one more hit off the blunt. When he spoke his voice was slow and measured, heavy with emotion.

“Remember how poor we were when we first started doing this? Remember how things changed for us after we met Scratch? Like, things got better from day one. I mean, right after we did Meech, remember how proud you were to go to school in all those new clothes and not be laughed at for once? We finally felt like we were regular kids and not just some dirty little poor kid from the ghetto? Remember that feeling, Snap? I felt like somebody for the first time when we walked into school and all the kids were jockin’ our new gear. It was like my first shot of pussy it felt so good. Even the females were given me a little respect for once. Even our teachers looked at us differently. Don’t even front like you don’t remember how they used to look at us with disgust and pity. Most of the time they just ignored us completely like they just figured that stupidity and poverty went hand and hand. I wouldn’t have dared raise my hand back then because I never wanted to call attention to myself. But I didn’t even sweat walkin’ up to the blackboard to solve a problem when I was sportin’ Jive and Cross Colors. I’d have never done that in a pair of raggedy ass hand-me-downs because if anyone had laughed at me I’d have had to kill them. Those clothes, that money, it changed our lives man. I would have killed anyone, even you, to keep that feeling. But now man, sometimes I’d give anything to be that poor dirty little fat kid again. You think you the only nigga with a conscience? Shit, I still think about what we did to Meech. You blew his ass away right at my feet.”

I was in shock. It may sound stupid now…I mean human beings are human beings…but I would have never imagined that Tank worried about this kind of shit. He always seemed to be so unaffected by everything.
Tank was human
. My whole perception of reality changed with that one realization.

But if he was human how could he kill so casually?

The thought kept coming back to me as I sat there guzzling the last of my forty and wiping tears from my eyes. How could Tank spray a guy with that big ugly AK and then go get a cheesesteak hoagie and laugh and joke with the hoes up on the Ave.? How could he be so nonchalant about it? Then again, how often did I really sit and think about the fools I smoked? Tank said he still thought about Meech and I hadn’t thought about him in years. He had been a stepping stone and I had stepped over his corpse and forgotten him.

What was wrong with me?

“Man, I know. I felt the same way. You think I wouldn’t have sprayed this whole damn neighborhood for a new pair of Adidas? Shit, you ain’t got to think because that’s just what the fuck we’ve done. I got cops following me all the time, raiding my house, harassing my Mom and Grandmom. I got to watch my back all the time, scared some nigga’s relative that I smoked might creep up on me and try to get revenge. Did you ever stop and think about how many bodies we got between us? We out there droppin’ fools like flies and half of them don’t even deserve to get bodied. I’m sayin’, it’s like Scratch be havin’ us kill somebody every damn month like he’s got a fuckin’ quota to fill. I think he does it just to keep muthafuckas scared so they don’t fuck with him. We’re endin’ muthafucka’s lives just to build that White boy’s rep.”

Tank nodded in agreement.

“I know what you sayin’, dog. Shit, half the time I think he just be havin’ us body muthafuckas to keep us busy so we don’t turn on him. He’s one paranoid muthafucka and that shit worries me too. He might start thinkin’ we out to get him too and get us done one day. But man, we don’t need to be thinkin’ about all this shit. We in this now ’til the end. We can talk this shit, but ain’t neither of us goin’ back. You tryin’ to go back to bein’ nuthin’? I don’t think so. So why even sweat this shit? I be thinkin’ about quittin’ all the time, but we both done got too used to bein’ paid. Ain’t neither of us givin’ this up. So let’s stop trippin’ on all this depressin’ shit. It’s blowin’ my high.”

“That’s the problem, Tank. I can’t forget. This shit is eatin’ me up. I be thinkin’ I see ghosts and shit at night like followin’ me around and shit. And I ain’t talkin’ about when I’m asleep and dreamin’ neither. I mean I’ll be drivin’ around in my car and I think I see people that we smoked up and walkin’ around like they stalkin’ my ass.”

“Dog, you trippin’. That weed is fuckin’ with your head, Snap. Maybe this shit is too strong for you. What you trippin’ on all this shit for anyway? Was it what Huey said earlier? Forget that nigga! He so damned conscious, but he a killer his damned self. He was out there bodyin’ fools before any of us. Let somebody call him White boy or a half-breed and see if they don’t get smoked. Shit, he killed your fuckin’ Dad! I ain’t sayin that muthafucka didn’t deserve it. I’m just sayin’ that Huey ain’t got no room to be comin’ down on us about shit.”

“Yeah, it’s Huey, but it’s something else too.”

“What is it, man?”

“I know what our next job is.”

“What?”

“You know. I know you knew it was comin’ too. The whole neighborhood knows it’s comin’.”

“You mean Warlock?” Tank asked.

“Yeah man, everybody knows that he’s the one that cut up those dealers up on Duval Street. He gave them fools ear to ear grins. Fuckin’ stupid too. He might as well have autographed his work. Everybody knows he’s the only fool still runnin’ around with a blade instead of a gun. Everybody else got gats except for crackheads and hoes. And as clean as that cut was it wasn’t just some crazy crackheads or nothin’. That shit was professional.”

“Fuck would he do that shit for though?”

“I don’t know man. That fool ain’t been right for years. He’s probably trippin’ ’cause his little brotha Nikky just had a heart attack from hittin’ the pipe and he probably figured those was the fools who sold it to him. Shit, Nikky got the shit from watchin’ him smoke. But niggas can’t take responsibility for they own fuck ups. They always got to blame somebody else.”

“Damn, Snap. Didn’t you and Nikky used to play together when ya’ll was little?”

“Yeah, and Warlock too. He was like a big brother to me. He’s the reason I wanted to get in the game to begin with. He wasn’t all fucked up then like he is now. He used to be clean as fuck, a straight hustler. You remember how he used to cruise around in that big ass Lincoln dressed like a pimp and shit? He showed everybody ’round here what it meant to be a playa. I got all my game from him. He used to shoot dice, steal cars, he even sold dope. His main thing was pimpin’ hoes though and he had some fine ones too. I never knew where he got them from, but he had white ones, black ones. He even had a couple Puerto Ricans once. Then his dumb ass started usin’ and he fell the fuck off like all the rest of them junkies. He kicked heroin and went straight to crack and fell in love. He ain’t been right since.”

“That’s fucked up, playa. You really gonna do him?”

“The trigga has no heart my brotha. I ain’t gonna do him, but this nine millimeter damn sure will.”

“That’s pretty cold, man.”

“I didn’t make this world, Tank. I just have to live in it. If I had a choice shit wouldn’t be like this. But it is what it is. Warlock is crazy anyway. He might come up and slit my throat next or yours. Who knows what he’s trippin’ on now. We’re just as responsible for bringing drugs into the hood as those two dealers. We’re Scratch’s enforcers and he knows that shit.”

“Yeah, whatever. That shit is still cold.”

“Alright, so you’ve got a fuckin’ conscience now. Well, keep that shit to your damned self. Since when did you start givin’ a fuck anyway?”

Tank just smirked, raised one eyebrow, and tilted up the last forty, draining it dry.

“I don’t give a fuck if you don’t. You goin’ to that game tonight?”

“What game?”

“The basketball game at the college?”

“Jerome and Ty playing?”

“Why tha fuck else would I be askin’? Me and Huey gonna hook up and go.”

“Ya’ll need a ride or something?”

“Naw, we straight. I was just seein’ if you gonna be there to support ya dogs?”

“Of course I’m gonna support ’em. They my dogs. I’m gonna be there.”

The twins were having their first basketball game at the college level. After years of taking fools to school on playground courts and high school gymnasiums they had both received athletic scholarships to Temple University. Tyrone had even been offered a scholarship to run track. He could sprint like a gazelle, but hoops were his passion. He could leap from the foul line like Dr. J and execute a perfect two handed slam-dunk while twisting in mid-air. They called him Jr. Jordan and he tried his best to live up to the hype. He still played the neighborhood courts on the weekends just to keep his skills sharp, even after practicing all week long at college. Basketball was his guarantee that he’d never have to do the things we were doing for cash. Seeing us fighting and struggling, slangin’ and bangin’, was enough to instill him with a fanatical drive to escape the legacy of his roots.

His brother Jerome wasn’t quite as dramatic. He came back to the neighborhood to hang out, smoke weed, drink forties, and get his nut off in the gaggle of willing hoodrat skeezers that flocked to him because of his amateur stardom. He hated college. The politics of his fellow classmates seemed naïve and ridiculous to him. They were all concerned with feminism, animal rights, gay rights, pacifism, conservation, wildlife preservation, recycling, and he could have given a fuck about all that. All Jerome was interested in was making dollars. He believed in the golden rule. Who ever has the most gold makes the rules. In his mind if you wanted to change the world you had to start by acquiring wealth. Only the wealthy truly had the power to affect change in today’s world. All us poor mutherfuckers could do is beg them for their help. He wasn’t into begging. He was into taking.

“Ya’ll mutherfuckers are wastin’ your time with all this activism shit. Don’t you know might makes right? Don’t no rights exist without the ability to defend them. How you goin’ to say you have the right to walk down the street without getting’ mugged when fools are rollin’ your ass for your ends every time you leave the house? Sayin’ you have the right don’t mean shit. Those are just words. They don’t mean shit until you bust a cap in the next fool who runs up on you tryin’ to take yours. That’s how rights are established. What would our constitutional rights be without a military and police force that defended them? Get some power, some fuckin’ cash, and then you can change all the shit you want.”