Dollar Bill

by Joy

  Dollar never once complained about all of the duties and responsibilities he was buried in as a child. He thought that it would only be temporary and that everything would be back to normal once his mother fully recovered. Neither his mother, nor Dollar himself, ever dreamed in a million years that ultimately she would end up losing her entire right leg. Initially, her toe had to be amputated, and shortly thereafter, so did her foot. Dollar was too young to grasp all of the details but he knew it had something to do with his mother neglecting a prior diagnosis of diabetes.

  After the initial amputations, only a few months went by before Dollar’s mother ended up losing her entire right leg. The government had the nerve to deny her social security two times before finally giving in to her claim. Auntie Charlene convinced Dollar’s mother to hire a lawyer, who in the end would receive a third of the retroactive benefits awarded. By then, Dollar’s mom could barely afford to keep toilet paper on the roll. Seeing his mother in such a helpless condition murdered Dollar’s young spirit.

  Because their mother had worked so hard to earn that almighty dollar, Dollar and Klein thought that money was the answer to everything. Dollar and his brother did anything they could think up in an attempt to become instant millionaires. They had yard sales that consisted of their broken toys and old clothing. They even set up a lemonade stand. There was nothing more rigorous for Dollar and his brother than setting up a lemonade stand in the projects and trying to sell lemonade to people just as broke as they were. Everybody wanted a free cup, wanted to use food stamps to pay for a cup, or didn’t have any money period. Dollar’s heart was always bigger than his pocket, so most of the time he ended up giving away free cups on IOUs. Perhaps if Dollar had gone down on the price of a cup of lemonade, he might have made some sales. One dollar was pretty steep for only a Dixie cup of lemonade.

  Everything that Dollar and his brother attempted to sell, Dollar would price at one crispy dollar bill. Whether it was a cup of lemonade, a broken old toy, or a painted rock, Dollar would hold the item up and yell, “Dollar, dollar. It’s only one dollar, y’all,” which was how he got the nickname Dollar. Pretty soon, everyone in the neighborhood ceased the use of his given name, Dareese Blake, and started calling him Dollar.

  As Dollar and his little brother grew older, Dollar’s brother decided that he would use his mind to gain riches instead of trying to get the crackheads and bums in the neighborhood to come up off of a measly dollar. His mother had always hammered the importance of education in her boys, so Klein set his mind to acing school and earning a free college education. His dream was to become a doctor someday, enabling him a plentiful income in order to take care of his family.

  To Dollar, college was four years that he didn’t have time to fool around with. Completing high school had already taken up four years of his time. College meant four more years of being broke. He decided that, like his younger brother, he too would use his mind to gain wealth. He would use his mind to think up a way to get fast loot.

  Growing up in the projects and watching his mother shuffle from gig to gig, Dollar learned that everybody had to have some hustle in them in order to conquer life. Be it legit or otherwise, everybody had to have a hustle. It was the only way to survive.

  Dollar came to the conclusion that he would let the love of money put its mojo on mankind. He would let the bankers bank, the pimps pimp, and the teachers teach. He would let the plumbers plumb, the thieves steal, the hoes fuck, and the ballers ball. Then, he’d catch them slippin’ and rob all of ’em blind. This resolution was how Dollar would find himself with a firearm aimed at Cartel and his two partners.

  Dollar portrayed himself to Cartel to be this eighteen-year -old kid from Indiana who jacked cars on a regular. Dollar had never stolen a bike, let alone an automobile. He convinced Cartel that he could present him with a white Benz with a gold kit and honey leather seats. He ran down his bogus resume of a life of carjacking and won Cartel’s greedy ass over.

  Cartel couldn’t wait to brand Dollar as one of his little accomplices to the good life. He never saw this setup coming. He’d only seen dollar signs.

  Dollar’s reminiscing thoughts of growing up in Gary, Indiana, were interrupted by Woody’s Garage’s door suddenly flinging open off of its hinges. At the same time, this startling occurrence would finally bring about some relief to Dollar. Two persons dressed in all black with black ski masks made their way through the doorway. It was Tommy and Ral. Dollar’s backup had finally arrived. Cartel and his partners’ hands were damn near touching the ceiling now.

  Without taking his eyes off of his targets, Dollar said through gritted teeth, “Where the fuck y’all been? Eleven o’clock, muthafuckas. Eleven o’clock.”

  “Nigga, we here now and that’s all that matters,” Tommy replied while pulling out a 9 mm with Ral close behind following suit. They each stood next to Dollar like statues with their leather glove–covered hands gripping the guns pointed at the designated targets.

  In the midst of their captor’s brief spat, instead of taking their chances and attempting to gain control of the situation, Cartel and his partners decided to remain submissive. If Dollar had planned on killing them he would have done it by now. They had a better chance of staying alive if they just waited this thing out and did as they were told.

  “Strip,” Ral yelled to Cartel and his partners as he walked toward them. The three of them looked at each other with their hands still in the air.

  “Did you hear my boy?” Tommy asked. “Strip, take your muthafuckin’ clothes off. What y’all niggaz waiting on, for us to throw y’all some dollar bills or some shit?”

  “Yeah, to make it rain.” Ral laughed. “Take all your clothes off and put them in a pile in front of you. Start by removing those pieces y’all carrying one at time. And don’t try no funny shit either.”

  The three men slowly removed the guns they were carrying from either their back, hip, or calf holster. Thank God. Dollar hadn’t slipped up and given them a chance to go for their shit. Time and circumstance was on his side after all.

  The men laid their guns on the ground as Ral stood behind them with his gun to their backs. “Now the clothes,” Ral said.

  “Oh, y’all some faggots, huh?” Tone said as the men began to peel their clothes off slowly.

  “Duck that ho right there,” Dollar said to Tommy. “He talks too fuckin’ much. As a matter of fact, duck all three of ’em. I don’t want to hear their voices anymore.”

  “Quack, quack,” Tommy said, obediently following Dollar’s orders, pulling out duct tape.

  Cartel laughed. “Perhaps you should have finished school. It’s duct tape, not duck.”

  Tommy walked in close to Cartel, not happy at all that he was trying to clown on them. “Duck, duct, whatever. It’s all interchangeable.” Tommy tore off a piece of tape and threw it over Cartel’s mouth. “See, I just ducted this duck’s beak.” Tommy let out a chuckle.

  After a few minutes, the three men stood buck naked displaying only their jewelry and a strip of duct tape across their mouths.

  “Trick or treat, muthafuckas,” Ral said as he walked in front of them carrying a brown paper bag he had removed from his jacket pocket and popped open. “Check all that shit in.”

  The men began to drop watches, necklaces, and rings into the bag. They removed their diamond earrings and bracelets as well. That’s what they got for trying to show off. Bling blinging and ching chinging was one of the tactics Cartel used to lure his employees into his ring. He wanted to show them the things they could end up owning. The bling ching to the baby thugs was the dead, raw fish being thrown to the killer whale to calm him into doing tricks. Dollar had studied Cartel and his crew’s game like it was a textbook. He knew their steelo and was prepared to get paid off of their vanity.

  Tommy went through every pocket of the pile of clothes on the floor. Some contained money clips filled with one hundred dollar bills. There were loose wads of money, also. The clothes were thrown to Dolla
r after they had been successfully raided by Tommy.

  Dollar balled the clothes up under his armpit and headed toward the exit door. Tommy scooped up anything that slipped from Dollar’s clutches.

  “I want all of you to count one hundred Mississippis before you even consider moving. I mean, your dicks better not even get hard and start to rise or you’re dead,” Ral shouted. “Start counting now!”

  Dollar, Tommy, and Ral looked around making sure they hadn’t overlooked anything of value. Ral spotted what looked like a couple of cell phones lying on the worktable behind the men so he fell behind to go back and retrieve them.

  Ral picked up the cell phones. As he skimmed over the worktable, Cartel looked to make sure that Dollar and Tommy’s backs were still toward them. They were pretty much walking out of the door at that point. Cartel knew that between him and his two dudes, they could be quick enough to overpower Ral, take his gun, and use him as a shield to escape, after getting their shit back. Cartel couldn’t risk word getting out on the street that some young punks robbed him for some jewelry and chump change. That would make the real niggaz think they could test him.

  It was a risk to go after Ral, but it was one Cartel was willing to take. No way was he going to have his street reputation tainted by some punks. If Cartel allowed Dollar to get this one off, every little nigga Cartel had working for him would end up tryin’ him and his crew. This was the last chance Cartel saw visible to eliminate future scenarios. So in his mind he said, fuck it! It was worth the risk.

  Cartel ran toward Ral in attack mode. His partners were right behind him. They had only gotten to twenty Mississippi, but this was their chance to beat Ral down for his gun, pump lead into Dollar and Tommy, and get their money, jewelry, clothing, and egos back.

  Dollar held the door for Tommy to come through and Tommy did the same for Ral. When Tommy discovered that Ral wasn’t there, Tommy looked just in time to see the three men dashing toward Ral. Not one of the parades of bullets Tommy let off hit Ral, but Cartel and his dudes dropped dead like flies. Obviously someone had studied the old Western movies and practiced in the mirror.

  “Whoa wee! Hell yeah!” Ral shouted as he looked at the three bodies piled up on top of one another. “Didn’t I tell y’all fools not to move until you got to one hundred Mississippi?” he said to the corpses. “Perhaps you the one who should have stayed in school.” He kicked Cartel’s dead body. “You would have learned how to count to one hundred, fool, and that shit would have kept your asses alive.”

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Dollar shouted as he snatched the cell phones from Ral and threw them on the ground. “Who the fuck was you going to call, man? Ghostbusters?” Dollar gritted his teeth in anger. “We got bodies on our shit now and for what, some fuckin’ cell phones?”

  “Fuck,” Tommy yelled, still in shock at the sight of the dead bodies, one suddenly grasping for one more chance at life. Tommy began to wipe down the place with a shirt collected from one of the dead men, making sure that not a single smudge of evidence was left behind.

  Tommy threw Dollar the car keys and all three of them ran out of the garage to the rental car that Dollar had some chick back home cop for them. They sped off, leaving nothing but tire prints and three dead men full of bullet holes.

  “That could have been my ass lying back there fuckin’ ’round with you two late-ass niggaz,” Dollar said as he consistently looked in his rearview mirror for any sign of the police or someone following them. “I ought to fuck y’all up.”

  “Did you see that shit, man?” Ral asked from the backseat, still hype from the gunfire. “Tommy laid them sons of bitches out flat. Holy shit. I could hear those caps poppin’ they asses. Pop, pop, pop!”

  “Tommy Gun to the rescue,” Dollar said. “But I still ought to beat the both of y’all’s asses for showing up late. Ral, you need to take your own advice about staying in school. You learn how to tell time.”

  “You need to quit talking to me like I’m some dude,” Tommy, who was sitting in the passenger seat, said, removing the baseball cap from her head and allowing her long, jailhouse braids to fall down her back.

  “Aw, you know you like one of the guys, Tommy, so quit trying to play all sensitive,” Dollar said, lightly punching her on her shoulder with his fist. “I consider you to be one of my boys. You’ve always been one of the boys, you know that.”

  Dollar loved teasing Tommy about being a tomboy. She tried to act like it didn’t bother her, but Dollar knew it did. Nonetheless, he still teased her. The only time Tommy ever looked like a girl was when she was defending her womanhood. All that neck snappin’ was a given.

  “Well, I got the goods to prove I’m all woman,” Tommy said, rolling her eyes and snappin’ her neck out like an ostrich.

  “Don’t talk like that. I’m not trying to visualize you with a pussy,” Ral yelled from the back seat as he and Dollar began to laugh.

  “Both of you can go to hell. This pussy done saved y’all’s life many a time,” Tommy replied. “Besides, I’d rather be a chick than a trailer park trash lookin’ white boy.”

  Dollar continued laughing, but Ral’s laughter faded quickly.

  “Why you gotta make racial comments and shit?” Ral said, getting an attitude as he ran his fingers through his orange-red hair. “That’s why I hate when a muthafucka save your life a couple of times. They think you always owe them something and that they can talk to you anyway they please. They be throwing it up in your face and shit.”

  “Quit acting like a bitch,” Dollar said. “We got over $200,000 in cash and prizes and you back there crying.”

  Dollar always had to break up arguments between Tommy and Ral. He was the peacemaker of the trio. Besides that, Tommy and Ral were like family to him and he didn’t want to see family beefing.

  “Man, I’m just saying,” Ral added. “Why I gotta be trailer park trash just ’cause I’m white? I’m just saying that shit ain’t cool.”

  “Well, don’t just say shit. Tommy done had your back since she was whooping niggaz on the playground for your ass. You do owe her.”

  Tommy looked back at Ral and stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Well,” Ral said lightweight under his breath. “Just let a muthafucka die next time.”

  “You think I won’t?” Tommy said. “Talkin’ ’bout some ‘count to a hundred Mississippis.’ What kind of shit is that? White people, man, I swear.” She shook her head in dismay.

  Dollar couldn’t help but laugh as the three jumped onto 70 West, the interstate that would take them from Columbus, Ohio back home to Indiana. This was their first joint robbery and it looked like it would pay off pretty well. It was the end of a life of have-nots and the beginning of a life of having it all.

  All Dollar wanted to do with his share was take it home to his mother. He was the epitome of a mama’s boy. He felt just as proud to be in a position to give his mom some ends as a result of the Cartel stickup as he would have been if he were turning over a hard-earned paycheck to her.

  Dollar hadn’t thought of the lie he would tell his mother as to where the money had come from. If she knew what her son was doing, if the lack of will to live didn’t kill her, the truth surely would. She had raised her boys to never put themselves in a position to encounter any sort of brush with the law.

  Dollar had promised his mother that he would keep on a straight and narrow path and not end up like some of the other boys in the hood had: in gangs, in jail, or in the grave too soon. He had tried hard to be loyal to his words. His father had been anything but loyal to her and he never wanted to cause her that kind of pain again. Dollar’s loyalty to his mother was fueled by his father’s disloyalty to the family. Ironically, Dollar’s loyalty to providing for his mother and brother would be the force behind him doing things that were against his mother’s wishes.

  Tommy and Ral, on the other hand, had engaged in some criminal activity before their task with Dollar, but nothing of this caliber. Tommy had a hustle
flipping bank accounts. She would get people to give her their checkbooks and ID, make spurious deposits into the accounts right before the weekend, then spend the entire weekend on a shopping spree writing one bad check after another. She would purchase jewelry, clothing, food, and electronics, and use Ral on the instances when the owner of the checks was a man.

  If the owner of the checking account was light skinned, Ral could get away with it by wearing a baseball cap. But being a white dude with red hair, it was hard for Ral to pass as a brotha. Nonetheless, he and Tommy would flip and split when they could.

  After all had been said and done, Tommy would pay the owner of the account up to $1,500, depending on how much dirt she got away with over the weekend. Sometimes the collaborator would have special merchandise requests and Tommy would just shop for them instead of giving them money. Come Monday morning, the collaborator was to report their checkbook missing to their financial institution. By that time, Tommy and Ral had damaged the account severely.

  When Dollar came up with the idea for the three of them to start robbing people, Tommy and Ral were game. They were ready for a bigger and better hustle. The shelf life of flipping bank accounts wasn’t that long, so when opportunity knocked, Tommy and Ral were quick to open the door. Dollar, on the other hand, had just gotten his criminal cherry popped with the Cartel job. He had successfully robbed three occupational criminals. It wasn’t in the plan to see them dead, but circumstance always determines the outcome.

  No longer a pup on that night, July 4, 1994, Dollar became a Dawg. He, Ral, and Tommy had set the stage to become career hustlers. They had no intentions of stealing petty stuff or holding up liquor stores. Their hustle would be taking advantage of and profiting from other people’s hustle. They would make a life for themselves by straight-out robbin’ muthafuckas and pray to God that one day they never got caught slipping and had the tables turned.