by Dorian Sykes
“There you are.”
“That’s it?” Wink asked.
“That’s it. There’s a few more tricks to the trade, but I’ll show you those when you ready.”
“Good lookin’ out, Gary man. I really appreciate it.”
“A’ight, just remember no mention of this to your mom or anyone else. I’m supposed to be retired.”
“I got you,” said Wink. He focused his attention back on the glob of crack sitting on the counter.
That shit was easy, he thought. I can do that. Wink fingered his investment.
“Yeah, it’s on,” he said aloud. He cleaned up the mess, then headed up to his room to get ready for their trip to Mississippi.
Wink was one step closer to where he wanted to be, which was to the top. He told himself that he had to make it. Third time’s a charm.
Chapter Seventeen
As promised, Willie got his turn to suitcase the work. Trey got his get-back from when Krazy and Willie clowned him, saying that it looked like he had just got off a bull the way he was walking after boofing the coke. Willie’s walk was ten times worse.
“My nigga, you gotta do some squats or something to loosen that thang up. You walk in there like that and they gon’ know you got something,” Wink said as Willie walked out of the bathroom. His face was all screwed up.
“Fuck you, Trey,” he said.
Trey was holding his side and was in tears from laughing so hard. “It look like you got hemorrhoids,” Trey joked. “Ahh . . .”
Wink couldn’t help but laugh ’cause the shit was funny. Trey had this high-pitched laugh that was just contagious.
“Y’all think shit is funny, huh?”
“Willie, don’t get salty on us. You were clowning us when we had to do it. Now it’s yo’ turn,” said Wink.
The intercom inside the Greyhound bus station crackled, and a woman announced a departure number.
“I think that’s us,” said Trey.
“Come on. Just walk between us,” said Wink.
“Yeah, come on, wobbles.” Trey pulled on Willie’s arm.
“Fuck off me.” Willie snatched away and fell in step with Wink as he led the way out of the terminal. They each handed the short, wide-body woman their stubs so they could get some good seats.
“How long they say the ride is?” asked Willie.
“About eighteen hours, plus I think like ten layovers and pit stops,” said Wink.
“Yeah, so you might as well get comfortable, Cram. That’s yo’ new name: Cram.” Trey laughed. He wasn’t letting up on Willie’s ass.
The bus filled up about halfway, and they made their departure. Wink sat up and looked out the window, while Willie and Trey dozed in and out of sleep. Wink thought about his mom and her being worried. Gary said that he would explain to her that he’d be all right. He figured maybe it would sound better coming from him. Wink thought about his main man, Krazy, and how he wished he was sitting beside him on the bus. Things just weren’t the same without him. But mainly, Wink thought of his father. Those thoughts of him doing life in the fed haunted him. Wink told himself that when he got back, he was going to find out exactly what happened with his dad.
Their first layover was in Ohio, just outside of Toledo. Wink saw the setup of sheriffs and woke Willie and Trey up.
“Y’all be on point. I think they pullin’ everybody off the bus and searching they stuff,” said Wink. They each had a little carry-on bag with a few outfits, but Wink wasn’t worried about their bags. He was worried about the crack packed in Willie’s ass.
He took a deep breath and remembered everything he learned off J-Bo. The K-9 can’t smell it if it’s in a nigga’s ass. Wink could hear J-Bo’s raspy voice. He remembered also what Gator had told them about having the same story.
“Here we go. Yeah, they pullin’ everybody off.”
“You got that thing packed good? Trey asked Willie.
“Yeah, but it feel like I gotta shit.”
“Well, hold it, ’cause here they come,” whispered Wink.
“You two, off the bus.” A sheriff pointed at Trey and Willie. He waited on them to get up and walk down the aisle, and then he searched around their area. He waved the K-9 Unit on the bus. Them racist devils bypassed everyone else on the bus. The mutt went straight to Willie and Trey’s seats. The dog sniffed around but gave no signals.
“You, stand up!” the sheriff ordered Wink.
Wink had to stand there while the K-9 sniffed all around his person, then his seat.
“Where y’all boys on the way to?” The sheriff looked down his sweaty fat nose at Wink.
“My grandmother’s house in Mississippi.”
“Well, you just have yourself a seat.” The sheriff scooted his wide frame back down the aisle and off the bus.
Wink watched as he said something to Willie, then Trey. Wink figured that he was probably asking them the same exact question, where they were headed. They wanted to split them up to see if they had their story straight. After twenty minutes of waiting, the KKK members in disguise finally let Willie and Trey back on the bus.
“That’s crazy. You see how they had us out there? They kept asking us the same shit. Where you going?” Trey said, taking his seat across from Willie.
“Yeah, well, something’s tellin’ me we might as well get used to it. We just gotta stay on top of our game,” said Wink as he watched the caravan of crackers pile into their cars.
* * *
Willie’s cousin Ball was waiting on them at the bus station. He hit his horn at the sight of Willie as he walked out the terminal.
“Over here, Buddha!” yelled Ball as he leaned his fat face out the side window of his silver used-to-be police car. It was an old Diplomat he bought at an auction.
“Buddha?” Wink teased.
“They don’t call me that no more.” Willie was all uptight about his childhood name.
Trey chimed in as they tailed Willie over to his cousin’s car. “Buddha,” Trey said in a scary low voice like he was worshipping an actual Buddha statue. He ran past Willie and rubbed his stomach.
“See what you started?” Willie asked Ball as he opened the passenger door.
“What?” asked Ball.
“From now on, don’t call me Buddha.”
Trey and Wink climbed in the back seat. They had to sit sideways with their knees touching because Ball’s fat ass needed all the room he could get. His seat was all the way leaned back, and yet his gut was still beefing with the steering wheel. It was impossible for him to turn and introduce himself. His lack of room and no neck stopped that, so he adjusted the rearview mirror.
“Ball, this is my nigga Trey, and this here is Wink,” Willie said.
“They call me Ball.”
“A’ight,” Trey and Wink said together.
Ball turned the engine over and pulled away from the station. He popped in a cassette tape and pushed play. Trey nudged Wink with his knee as Luke’s “Doo Doo Brown” filled the car. This nigga was riding around listening to booty music.
Where they do that at? thought Wink. Evidently, right there in Mississippi. They were definitely down south.
After a half hour of driving, Ball turned down this narrow road named Montgomery. All the houses were little matchboxes tucked close to one another. They all seemed to be identical little white wooden-framed houses with no basement or second floor. Wink saw five kids run out of one house just ahead. Two old men sat on the porch drinking, and from the doorway, a woman yelled at the backs of the kids as they ran down the street. Ball pulled right into the very driveway where Wink had witnessed all the ghetto action.
“What, you making a stop?” asked Trey.
“Nah, this is home sweet home,” said Ball as he struggled to get out the car.
“This shit is crazy,” whispered Trey.
Willie had already climbed out the car. He was hugging one of the old men around his neck.
“Let’s just hope we hurry up and run through the w
ork, so we can get the fuck back to the city,” said Wink.
Ball waved them to get out of the car. He was taking up most of the room, standing on the front porch.
“Damn, boy, get yo’ big ass outta my face.”
“I’m sorry, Unc,” Ball said, still waiting on Trey and Wink as they crossed the dirt-patched grass.
“And just who in the hell are these two niggers?” Uncle Lonnie looked down at Wink and Trey.
“Don’t mind him, y’all. He drunk,” said Ball.
“I might be drunk, but it’s still my damn house,” Uncle Lonnie said.
The boys entered the shack. In the living room sat more kids. They were all packed onto two aging sofas, with their eyes glued to the small TV mounted on two milk crates. Wink noticed four women sitting around the kitchen table, looking rough as all outdoors. If there was any question as to who all those rugrats sitting in the front room belonged to, that question was answered.
“Close the door,” said Ball. He flopped down on two mattresses sprawled out on the floor. The room was completely out of order. Empty chip bags and quarter water jugs lined the floor. Dirty clothes decorated the dresser and floor as well, and there was this stomach-turning stench coming from somewhere. It smelled like baby shit, and the heat was cooking it.
Wink flipped his top lip under his nose and looked around with his eyes in search of a shitty Pamper.
“Ay yo, how many people stay here?” Trey couldn’t help but ask.
“I lost count about two years ago. But this here is my room. Don’t nobody share this with me,” said Ball. He bit into a half-eaten Snickers bar.
Trey scrunched up his face. There was no telling how long that candy had been sitting out.
“This ain’t gon’ work, my nigga. I’ma be honest. Y’all got any hotels around here?” asked Wink. He had seen poor, but this was on some other type level of being poor. They was living like they were over in a Third-World country.
“Yeah, it’s a couple up on the Ave. That’s where all the money is at anyway.” Ball licked his fat fingers of the smeared chocolate.
“Yeah, well, that’s where we need to be,” said Trey. “’Cause ain’t no way we gon’ all be able to sleep up in here.”
Just as Trey finished his statement, he saw two mice shoot out from under a pile of dirty clothes and out into the hallway. Ball didn’t seem to flinch. To him, a mouse was about as common as an ant. He saw them all the time.
Wink and Trey clutched their bags at the sides, careful not to brush up against anything. They weren’t trying to take anything with them that didn’t come in with them.
“What’s good? Y’all ready to get this money?” asked Willie as he walked into the room. He had been in the bathroom, pushing out the coke.
Trey and Wink looked at him like, you’s a nasty mothafucka. Willie grew up in Mississippi, so that meant he used to live like that.
“We outta here. That’s what’s good,” Trey said. He walked out the room with Wink on his heels.
“We just got here,” Willie said. He followed them out and back inside the Diplomat. “What’s up?” Willie asked from the front seat.
“Y’all living like beasts up in that mothafucka. That’s what up. We ’bouts to get a room and work from there,” said Wink.
They froze the game as Ball opened his door and sank behind the wheel. Within minutes, they were pulling into the Knights Inn on Bellville Ave. It was a step up from the shack they’d just left, but it was still in the heart of the ghetto. Obvious dope fiends and crackheads lined the outside of the hotel and the Waffle Hut across the street. All eyes focused in on the silver Diplomat as Ball parked near the entrance. The only kind of people that drove them type of cars were the police, so all the movement on the Ave. ceased until they saw it was nobody but Ball’s fat ass.
“Boy, you gon’ get enough of ridin’ through here in that fuckin’ thing!” yelled Beats, a local crackhead. He earned the name Beats because he was known for always beating people out of their money. He was an old, slick-talkin’, oil-black nigga who lived to get high.
Ball waved Beats off as he held the door open to the front lobby of the hotel. Wink walked up to the window and got two rooms side by side. He handed Trey one of the room keys and kept one.
“Why you get two rooms?” asked Willie.
“The same reason J-Bo had two rooms. Never put all ya eggs in one basket,” said Wink.
They stepped outside the lobby and crossed the parking lot. Ole Beats was on their heels. “Fat boy, you hear me talkin’ to you,” said Beats.
Ball stopped and slapped his hands on his pants. “What, Beats, what? I ain’t got a a dollar today.”
“Nah, is you on? I got fifty dollars I’m try’na spend.” Beats unfolded a soiled fifty for Ball to see.
“Give us a minute,” said Ball, taking the weathered fifty from Beat. He checked it for authencity, because it just wasn’t no telling with Beats.
It took Ball a minute to climb the two flights up to the second floor of the hotel. Wink had wanted the rooms upstairs so they’d have time to get rid of the work in case the police showed up.
“Next time, get some rooms downstairs.” Ball closed the door to the room and leaned against it for a moment. “Here,” he said, extending the fifty-dollar bill.
“Who this from?” Wink asked, taking the bill.
“Beats. He downstairs, waitin’ in the parkin’ lot.”
There was a knock on the door. Ball turned and looked through the peephole, then snatched the door open to a crack. “I told you to wait downstairs.”
Beats was trying to look over Ball’s shoulder. “Shit, I gotta keep an eye on mine’s,” he said. He had beat so many people over the years that it was automatic he thought someone was going to try to get out on him.
“I’ll be out in a minute.” Ball closed the door and locked it. “I’m tellin’ y’all right now, that nigga there is slick as goose grease, so watch ’im, and don’t credit him shit.”
“Who that, ole Beats?” Willie laughed.
“You already know,” said Ball.
“You got that out already?” Wink asked Willie.
Willie dug in his bag and pulled out the cucumber-size package of crack. He tried to hand it to Wink, but Wink stepped back.
“I’ma need you to unwrap that.”
“Yeah, Cram. Ain’t nobody ’bout to be touching that shit after you done had it all up yo’ ass,” teased Trey.
“Nigga, fuck you,” said Willie. He walked the package over to the counter in the small kitchen and tore the plastic open.
“Ball, come show me what a fifty looks like,” said Wink.
Wink watched over Ball’s shoulder as he broke off a piece of crack, then he scooted a small dot to the center of the counter. He stepped back and waved his hand at the pebble.
“That’s fifty dollars?” Wink asked in total disbelief.
“All day ’round here.”
Wink gave Ball the pebble to go serve Beats, then packaged the remainder up in a Ziploc. All the feeling of regret for making the trip suddenly vanished. Wink could deal with all the country talkin’, dirt roads, and being over a thousand miles away from the crib. The money would make up for all that!
Trey had just finished taking a shower. The long bus ride, then stepping foot inside Willie’s people’s shack, had him feeling grimy.
“My nigga, I knew you was a country ’bama,” Trey said to Willie. “You down here livin’ like you in Roots.”
“I can’t laugh with you on that, Trey. It’s money down here, and I’m feelin’ this shit already,” said Wink.
“He don’t know nothin’,” said Willie.
“Look, I’ma be next door gettin’ this shit bagged and ready. Y’all post over here. You know the same one-two how we did it in Ohio,” said Wink, standing at the door.
“How long we gon’ be down here?” asked Trey.
“Shit, we gotta get it while the gettin’ is good,” Wink said then left the ro
om and went next door to his room. He spread all the work out on the kitchen counter and started making twenty-dollar rocks and fifty pieces.
Wink was in no rush to leave Mississippi. When he went back to Detroit, he wanted to have enough money to buy his first kilo, a whole brick. No more petty ounces or double-ups, but his own bird. Mississippi seemed like just the place to get him there.
Chapter Eighteen
Soon as the word got out that there was some niggas from out of town with some good butta, as they called it, them country ’bamas were beating the door down, coming to get they issue. They were spending no less than fifty dollars each, so Wink started taking two twenties and selling them for fifty. He was lovin’ it, because the money was coming in so fast and nobody had complained once about the size of the rocks. They just wanted more and more.
Wink ran out in two days. He was sitting on thirteen thousand dollars and some change off just two ounces. They all took turns counting the money and making plans on what they would buy.
Wink let Trey and Willie indulge in their pipe dreams for a minute. Then he reminded them that one-fourth of the crew was sitting in jail. “Let’s not forget about Krazy. He needs this money for more than anything we could ever think to buy,” said Wink. “But that don’t mean we can’t splurge a little something. Here.” Wink counted out three thousand dollars and tucked the other ten grand.
He handed Trey and Willie a thousand dollars each and kept a grand for himself. “We outta work, so I guess niggas can chill or do whatever.”
“I’m ’bout to hit the mall up,” said Willie, counting his stack.
“You mean we. Shit, I’m ready to jump clean and see some of these country-toe bitches y’all got down here,” said Trey.
“I’ma fall back and see if I can’t find us some more work,” said Wink.
“A’ight. Well, we be back. Come on, Trey. We can have Ball shoot us to the mall.”