by Cash
The nigga fit the description that I had been given perfectly. He was tall with a funny shaped head and he wore his hair in a short afro. He was sagging real low, as he walked to his gray Expedition. His jeans were down to his knees and his belt was pulled tight around them. With every step, he had to reach down and hold up his pants. So, there was no way that he could run when I approached him with my banger out.
“This is from KK,” I informed him as I opened up his chest with six shots from my nine.
CHAPTER 39
A week later, Criminal called me out to his house. We sat in the den chopping it up. I mostly listened and let Criminal talk. My mind was preoccupied with other things.
“Sup, fam? Why you all silent and shit?” he asked.
“I’m good, bruh. I’m just thinking,” I said.
“Well, I got something that’ll put a smile on your face. Here, check this out. Assassin and them got that nigga, Lonnie, early this morning and they recorded it and forwarded the video to my phone. Push the play button. Those niggas handled that shit.”
He handed me his Android. It was already set to the video. I pressed play and watched a real live murder of a rat.
Three dudes with torn sheets covering their faces entered a cell. One of them shook Lonnie awake. “Get up, nigga! Get the fuck up!” He dragged Lonnie out of his bunk. I could see the fright on his face.
“Asalaam alaikim!” he cried.
“Alaikim my ass. Nigga, Islam can’t protect a rat!”
“Yeah, nigga, it’s time to pay the piper,” added another of the masked attackers.
“Youngblood’s son, Lil T, sends his love,” the third one taunted and shoved a long shank into Lonnie’s chest. He screamed like a bitch.
“Shut up and die, snitch muthafucka!” The three of them stabbed Lonnie over and over again until blood covered the cell. They put the lense right up to his face, so I could see his mouth was slack and his pupils were dilated. He looked dead to me.
The video faded to black. I hit replay and watched Lonnie’s bitch ass get smashed four more times.
“Your homies are some real niggas. Do you think they’ll get away with it?” I asked as I handed him back his phone.
“It don’t even matter to them, bruh. They’ll probably never get out anyway. And if so, it would thirty years from now. A nigga can’t see that far.”
Before I bounced, I had Criminal forward the video to my phone. I planned to watch it with Inez before erasing it.
After Inez watched the video I saw that she was crying.
“Rest in peace now, baby,” she said, clutching onto the big urn with my pop’s ashes in it.
I hugged her and felt the same relief. I had gotten them all in revenge of my father. “I kept my promise to you, pop. No way could I have stopped until that bitch nigga was dead.” I proudly touched my chain.
“What now?” asked Inez.
“I got some other things to handle. Then I’ma put Atlanta in my rearview mirror. Before I do, though, I’ma give you money for Grandma Ann’s care and for yourself and my sisters. Because once I do what I gotta do, I’m out. Just remember that I love y’all.”
Inez didn’t try to talk me out of what she knew I had planned. She understood what principles meant to a real nigga. Because she had loved Youngblood, the realest of the real, and she had nurtured his son to be just as official.
CHAPTER 40
I still hadn’t been able to hunt down Zeke and Soldier Boy. If either of them were still in the city, they had fallen all the way back.
I’d gone by the strip club where Erotica had last worked, but she too had gotten ghost. Not being able to hunt down Zeke was tormenting me. That bitch nigga had sent Big Ma and Laquanda to awful deaths—I longed to stand over him and set his body ablaze. Soldier Boy was gonna get got, too. Ava’s death would not go unpunished even if it took a lifetime.
If the rumors were true that Zeke and Soldier Boy had joined forces, why were they hiding? Why not come after me with everything they got? I’m just one muthafuckin’ nigga. Like Biggie said, “Let’s make the beef cook!”
I guess those pussies were afraid of hard dick. Since I couldn’t find those two hos, I decided to deal with something just as personal, first.
I knew that after I did this shit I would have to bounce from the A for a while, so I began falling back and spending time with my sisters and with Trey. I didn’t let on to Kamora what I had peeped her doing in the doorway that night. Later for that—I had it captured and saved in my phone.
Near the end of August, Shan died from a cancerous brain tumor. “I guess the guilt from what she did to my pops was so strong in her mind that it ate her alive,” I said to Inez.
“Are you going to pay for the funeral?” she asked.
“Fuck no! And I’m not attending it either.”
I don’t know who paid for Shan’s funeral, but I suspected that Inez did out of some sense of obligation to Big Ma.
My suspicions were based on hushed phone conversations I observed Inez having over the next few days leading up to the service. I still had no desire to attend Shan’s funeral, but somehow, I found myself at the viewing, staring down in the casket into my biological’s mother’s thin face. The cancer had eaten away at her, and in death, she looked skeletal and much darker than she had been in life.
A wig sat on her head as crooked as a tam. I reached inside the casket and straightened it. I closed my eyes and let our battles play in my mind like an urban movie. So many emotions rose up in my chest at once. Anger. Hate. Disgust. Pity. And finally sorrow.
I recalled earlier times when I was a little boy, before the thing that happened with her and my pop. Back then, I called her Mama, not Shan. Back then, there were trips to the park or a day at the circus. A dollar for ice cream or some change for candy. Kisses on my knee when I had fallen down, scraped it and ran in the house crying. And when a teacher spanked me in the first grade, the woman in the casket had come up to the school the next day and turned that classroom out.
“You had to love me back, then,” I whispered to her in a voice strained by years of pain.
I had loved her, too—back then.
I could not forgive all that happened since, but I understood. Shan’s anger had been guilt turned inside out and directed against me because I was my father’s splitting image. I reached inside of the casket and took her cold, bony hand in mine.
“Rest in peace, Mama.” I wanted to cry but a tear would not fall.
Slowly, I lifted my head, shoved my hands down in my pockets and turned and walked out.
***
“It’s almost over. I’ma miss the hell out of y’all, but I’ll be in touch and I’ll be back when the streets calm down. It’ll probably be crazy for a year or two, you know how that is,” I said to Inez as we stood outside of my truck in her driveway.
Leaves from the big tree that sat in her front yard occasionally blew on us.
“We’ll miss you, too. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Tamia and them. I know they are going to ask a million and one questions about why you had to go away.” She seemed to be on the verge of tears.
“Don’t go gettin’ soft on me,” I kidded and a tear escaped down Inez’ face. “C’mon now, it ain’t like I’m never coming back, and I’ll see you again tonight before I bounce.”
“Okay.” She dried her eyes with the back of her hands.
I reached inside of the truck and drug out a duffel bag full of money and set it at Inez’ feet. “This should take care of y’all.”
“Thank you. I love you, Lil T,” she said and started crying again. She pulled me into her arms and gave me a motherly hug. Over Inez’ shoulder I saw Tamia waving from the doorway. I waved back to her and flashed her a smile.
Inez finally released me and we said goodbye. “I’ll be back later tonight, but I won’t be staying long.” I reminded her.
“Be careful.”
“Indeed,” I said.
I hopped in my t
ruck and backed out of the driveway. The evening sun was disappearing behind the clouds, darkening the sky into a color of red or what is called Indian Summer in the Dirty South. But to me it looked like Heaven was on fire.
CHAPTER 41
As I drove away from Inez’ house, Criminal hit me up. I had spoken to him earlier, but he had been in traffic and unable to chop it up long. Mob shit had the streets under its foot and Criminal’s name carried the weight of God.
“Bruh, where you been?” asked Criminal as soon as I answered the phone.
“Just laying back, staying in my lane.”
“I heard that good shit. But damn, homie, don’t turn into no hermit. What you gon’ do about Zeke and Soldier Boy? Don’t let me find out you giving out passes now.”
“Never. Not to them or none other. You know my get down. I just haven’t been able to find those bitches.”
“Nawl? Well, they’re around and they’re thick as thieves.”
“That’s all good. I’ma just put my banger on the shelf and stay out of sight until they think the streets are safe, then I’ma be on their asses like some shit from Friday the 13th.”
“Yeah, that’s what’s up, bruh-bruh. What else is hittin’?” asked Criminal.
“I’m about to bounce out of town for a while and get my head right. You got a pound of loud on deck for me to take with me?”
“Yeah, bruh, that’s nothin’,”
“Can you meet me over at Kamora’s with it? I’m about to go lamp over there with her and my son for a minute.”
“I got you, fam’. Give me a couple hours. It’s seven thirty now. I’ll fall through there no later than ten.”
“One,” I said and then ended the call.
Kamora was looking good, as usual. Since having the baby six months ago, she had regained her shape and had gotten thicker in all the right places. Her hair was pinned up with two long bangs encasing her face.
I sat in her living room, bouncing Trey on my knee. Kamora sat next to us on the couch, smelling all lovely and shit. We talked about getting back together and about Trey and her going out of town with me.
“I would love for that to happen,” she said in a voice that was full of sincerity.
“Me too.”
We continued to talk about a future together, and I could tell that she wanted it more than anything. A smile was etched on my face as I listened to her go on and on about recapturing our love.
I nodded my head up and down, in agreement with her, as I kept on bouncing my son on my knee. Eventually, Trey fell asleep and I carried him back to his bedroom and gently laid him in his crib.
Kamora stood behind me with her arms around my waist. “I miss you, bae. I want you to make love to me,” she said.
“Later,” I promised. “Criminal will be falling through any minute now.”
I took her hand and we walked back into the living room. I sat back down on the couch and Kamora took a seat on my lap. She rested her head on my shoulder and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“Bae, can things go back to the they were?” she asked.
“Is that what you want?” I had never mentioned to her what I’d seen. Could I permanently erase that image from my mind? What was up with her and that nigga now?
“Yes, Trouble, I want us to be a family. You, me and Trey. I want that more than I’ve ever wanted anything. If God would grant me that one blessing, I would never ask Him for anything else.”
“That’s something to think about,” I said.
The doorbell chimed.
“That’s probably Criminal,” said Kamora. She got up from my lap and went to answer the door.
Criminal came right in and tossed a Ziploc freezer bag full of loud on the coffee table in front of the sofa. I stood up and dapped hands with him. “Sup, fam?”
“Nothin’ but Mob shit, running the city like I’m the muthafuckin’ mayor.” He took his banger out of his waist and placed it on the coffee table. Then he sat down on the sofa and reached for the loud. “This that grown man,” he exclaimed.
I sat down next to him and handed him some sticky paper to twist one up. Kamora took a seat in the high back chair across from us and asked Criminal about Hadiya.
“My boo is good. We just found that she’s pregnant, so life is sweet.”
“Yaay!” cried Kamora. “I’m happy for y’all.”
“Congrats, bruh,” I chimed in.
“Thanks, and I’ll tell Hadiya what you said Kamora.” Criminal licked the blunt and then passed it to me to spark.
I hit it once, then I passed it back. It tasted like that sho’ nuff. Criminal did his thing and then offered the blunt to Kamora. She waved it off. “I don’t smoke anymore,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow.
“More for me,” quipped Criminal.
I excused myself to go take a piss.
Five minutes later, I returned to the living room, walking behind the sofa and stopping directly behind Criminal, who was texting someone a message.
In the bathroom, I had pulled on a pair of racing gloves. In my hand, was a length of fishing line I had brought along. I wrapped the thin, sturdy cord around Criminal’s throat and pulled both ends with all of my might.
His cell phone clattered to the floor, and his hands shot up to his throat. He desperately tried to dig his fingers up under the thin cord that was strangling his bitch ass.
From the chair I heard Kamora gasp loudly.
Criminal was gagging and writhing, and his feet lashed around so violently he kicked over the glass coffee table. I had that death lock on that ass. While I strangled the life out of him, I snarled.
“Bruh, you’sa snake. You fucked my sister and she ain’t but fourteen years old. We were supposed to have been better than that.”
“Arrggh!” Criminal grunted.
“That was a violation that can’t go unpunished.” Beads of sweat formed on my forehead as I went down to one knee and pulled on the line with the rage of a bull.
Criminal clawed at my hands, but I felt the fight in him weaken.
“Die, bitch ass nigga. Die!” I gritted and continued strangling him until his whole body went slack.
I stood up. The underarms of my T-shirt was soaked. The length of fishing line had cut into Criminal’s throat like a razor. Blood ran down his neck. I walked around the couch and stared at him. His body was slouched and his eyes bulged. His tongue hung out of the side of his mouth in a grotesque fashion. The smell of shit and piss overtook the smell of the loud that lingered in the room.
Oblivious to everything else but Criminal, until now, I turned and looked at Kamora. Her hand was over her mouth, stifling a scream. Her eyes were wide with utter surprise.
“Why?” The question seeped right through her fingers.
“That bitch nigga fucked Eryka and got her pregnant. And it wasn’t enough for him to fuck my little fourteen-year-old sister. Nawl, that slimey ass nigga fucked my bitch, too.”
Her other hand went over her mouth and she stood up and started to back away.
“Yeah, bitch, I know.”
My Glock was in my hand now, aimed between her eyes. Kamora backed into the wall. I placed the banger against her forehead and retrieved my cell phone from my pocket. It was already turned on and the picture I had taken that night of Kamora and Criminal kissing in her doorway was set as my screensaver. It covered the full screen on the phone.
I held it up inches from her face.
Kamora stared at the screen for a minute and then she closed her eyes.
“It—only—happened—once,” she claimed as tears of guilt poured down her face. “You were running around with Ava on your arm, treating her like she was a queen—”
“So, fuckin’ what, bitch! Ava wasn’t your friend. Criminal was my nigga. Wasn’t you the one who told me that you would never violate me like my mother did my pop? Didn’t you say that real bitches don’t fuck their niggas’ friends? So, that makes you fake.”
Kamora cried
out, “What about all of the real shit I did? Doesn’t that count for anything? I’m sorry, bae, I truly am.”
“Tell it to God.”
Boc!
Kamora’s head split open like a piñata. Her body slid down the wall leaving a smear of blood. I aimed the banger down at her. “Disloyalty is unforgivable.”
Boc! Boc!
I walked back over to Criminal and put two in his head. “The same goes for you,” I spat.
I dropped the banger on the floor next to his body. Then I went to get Trey.
CHAPTER 42
“It’s over,” I told Inez, keeping my voice low so as not to awaken Tamia.
“Both of them?” asked Inez.
“Yep. Now they can be together for eternity.”
Inez held Trey across her shoulder. She shook her head.
“Where will you go?” she asked.
“I don’t even know yet. I’ma just get in my truck, turn on the music, and let it lead me to wherever.” I paused as another thought came to mind. I put a loving hand on her shoulder. “You know the po-po is gonna question you.”
“I don’t know shit. I was asked by Kamora to babysit. Criminal had enemies. Any one of them could have caught him at Kamora’s house and killed them. Don’t worry about me, I’m tried, tested and proven.”
“I know you are.”
Trey stirred and I held out my hand for him. Inez handed him to me and I held him to my chest. “My little nigga,” I said. “Never be slimey.” I kissed him and gave him back to Inez.
No sense in dragging the goodbyes out. I removed the chain from around my neck and placed it around Trey’s.
“Like father, like son.” I anointed my seed.
I saw that Inez was about to get all foggy eyed again, and I couldn’t deal with all those emotions at the moment. This was why I had chosen to leave without telling my sisters. I just couldn’t handle all those tears.
“Take care of my sisters, my seed and yourself, too,” I told Inez. “I love you.”
“I love you more,” she replied.