This Life

by Quntos KunQuest

  “Well, stop talkin’ and put it in the air.”

  PowwWoww looks around to see who’s birddogging. In the pen there are no secrets. Somebody always sees you. Even when you don’t see them.

  He waits until the chump yells, “Swing it down!” Then he takes the Black Lil Chris has lit and was puffin’ on. PowwWoww places the joint in his mouth and lights it with the tip o’ the cigar. He takes two long drags and passes it to the C’ster.

  Lil Chris takes the burner and pinches it between his thumb and index finger. Brings them to his already purple lips. One long drag. It burns the back of his throat. He almost coughs, but holds it in.

  They are walking to their next cut. Another long drag without exhaling. He puts the hot end to one nostril, pinches off the other, and sniffs the smoke coming from the cherry. This boy is a real smoke dragon.

  He holds it. Holds it. Pressure builds up behind his chest. Head kinda dizzy, spinning … He exhales. Can feel the fire leavin’ his lungs. One long gush of breath and smoke is all gone. No coughin’. And then … nothin’. Damn.

  Lil Chris falls in his cut. Bends into the work. Mayne, this dude a real buster. I know he didn’t phade me like that. I wonder if this cat’s playin’ with me. I oughta split his head with this swing blade. Damn, the headline must’ve marked this cut too long … long … wonder what’s wrong with that fool. Man, I’m gettin’ tired. I ain’t finished yet…yet? Okay, just a little more to go … more to go … more to … go. Man this shit fire! Dammmmmn.

  He’s blowed. Barely tilted. Wholely spliffed out. Standing there trying to act like he’s not. Failin’ badly.

  “Say, Lil Chris, let’s go over there.” PowwWoww is lookin’ in the direction of the cypher.

  “Nah, kid. I don’t wanna be aroun’ all them suckers.”

  “A lot o’ them dudes is real. Man, you trippin’. Let’s go.” Poww-Woww strikes out walking towards the crowd.

  The linepusher calls a 15-minute water break. What the hell. The C’ster moves on, a few steps behind his new rolldog.

  The closer he draws to the crowd, the more the beatin’ and hummin’ is pullin’ at his mindset. Lil Chris is feelin’ the vibe they got goin’, but these ain’t his people. He didn’t come here to get cool wit’ these cats.

  He stops to get some water out o’ the water cooler. Balancing his plastic white cup, he steps to the outer edge of the cypher. Sips. Intends to just stand there, but the rhythm pulls at his chest. He bobs his head to the beat. Zones all the way out. He takes a few more steps forward. He can barely hear the cat that’s rapping. He moves in even closer.

  By now, he’s in the middle o’ the crowd. They’re packed in tight, shoulder to shoulder. Heads bobbing in syncopation to the beat. Lil Chris feels someone pokin’ his arm. He turns to his right and finds PowwWoww, reachin’ him the Black & Mild cigar.

  He takes it. Hits it. Dizzy. Head spinning. The pipe tobacco in the bomber pulls smooth. It’s got an alright taste and the smoke smells good. Plus, the nicotine is really boosting his high. He’s really feelin’ the rhythm now. As he exhales gray smoke, he realizes that he has internalized the beat. He can feel it vibratin’ in the pit of his stomach. Even in his arms. He can even feel the water vibratin’ through the cup in his hand. He takes another toke off the Black. Starts to hand it back to PowwWoww, then pulls it back. Uh-uh. Gotta tax him for bringing me over here. With this thought, Lil Chris steps in farther until he finds himself in the center o’ the cypher.

  It’s dusty. The wind blows, picks up sand and sweeps it over the crowd in their dirty state blues, dingy shirts, and work boots. Lil Chris cannot so much see the people but rather feel the press o’ the crowd behind him. He’s got his head down. Everybody’s tryna hear what’s being said. More than a few eyes are cast curiously in the C’ster’s direction. But he ain’t even trippin’ off the crowd no more. The heat is oppressive. It’s burnin’ up. He’s sweatin’ buckets, but all he can hear, or see, or feel is the music.

  He’s vibin’ with these cats. Before he knows it, the dude next to him is rappin’. Spittin’, too. Nice flow. Kinda Jay-Zish, but nice, still. Lil Chris isn’t even thinking about rappin’, but after this guy tosses around 16 bars, he comes right on in. Second nature.

  “Uh … Uh …

  Long and strong

  Take a pull

  Nicotine enters my mind. Full

  I’m a mask

  Prosecution heavy.

  Mind on my task,

  Contemplatin’

  To hell with the past. Hear me!

  I’ma make the world take heed

  Recognize, playa. It’s Lil Chris

  Keyed on a masterplan.

  Penitentiary got me thinkin’

  Rankin’ every goal, while gettin’ swollen

  I’m an orchestrator. Stay with my mind on my biz.

  Now, go make sure they know what time it is …”

  At this last statement, the crowed breaks out into whoopin’ and hollerin’, saying Lil Chris is the best they heard in a long time. Poww-Woww is right behind him. Pats his shoulder and talks shit. He knew this was a live nigga. Lil Chris, though, is just puffin’ the Black. Takin’ the whole scene in, thinking.

  “Hold up, hold up,” Lil Chris says. On his MC shits like a true master o’ ceremony. “Bring that beat back! Gi’ me somethin’ to work wit’. Yeah …” The beat starts again. “Yeah, Lil Chris in this bitch.

  “They got a brother doin’ bad

  tryna worry me. Sad!

  They’ve taken my livin’. Young!

  Momentarily numb

  To feelin’

  Given the profile of a hoodlum

  Straight void o’ compassion; a bum

  Mashin’ in scum,

  Poverty stricken in slums

  The press’ll have you stressin’

  Drama givin’ occasion; my dilemma

  Media moppin’ the situation wit’ bias venom.

  Pitiful how penny hustlers get caught up

  In political dollars

  Cloutless

  Now I know!

  What a costly lesson.

  Doubtless

  Now, I show flashes of a scholar.

  Who’da thought white collars

  Conversate with ballers and shot callers

  Revelations are ransom

  Got me sittin’ handsome

  Fronted; given what I wanted

  Livin’ blunted. I never stunted

  The state is holdin’ me hostage and the

  Only thing that’ll grant me liberation

  Is the knowledge

  I obtain.

  Underrated. My college?

  Consequently … I been trained.

  Now, I’m searchin’ for my degree in pain

  It’s a struggle thing

  The strain, mayne. Reality?

  Is barin’ down on my back

  But, I won’t pay attention

  ’Cause I can’t let my high go.”

  Lil Chris puts everything he has into recitin’ that particular 16 bars. He channels all of his frustrations, his dejection and depression, his hopes and dreams, his resolve, his faith, his energy, down to his last reserves, into spittin’ that verse. From the time the verse jumps off, all you can hear is his voice and the beat and the hum. For that moment in time, he pulls them all in. Speaks words that they all are feeling, but ain’t articulate enough to express. He provokes their thoughts. Gives life, in the form of idea. All this with one verse. The power of one voice. He gives them a sure refuge inside of themselves.

  After he finishes, there is nothing. Silence. They haven’t heard him, per se. But they’ve experienced every syllable, every word he spoke. In the distance, another voice pierces the silence, bringing them all back to the order of the day.

  “Swing it down!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Clock is so conceited

  It doesn’t think of anyone

  But itself.

  The rest of us
/>   Have just been falling in step.

  I dare you to let go and live.

  THE CAST IRON BARS SLIDE open as Rise steps into the MPO, the main prison’s nerve center. He goes to the control booth to check in for the workday with Sergeant Angelwing.

  He’s in one of his funks this morning. Feels cloudy. But he’s learned that it’s possible to feel one way and think another. With this in mind, he climbs the stairs to the second floor wing of classrooms, all the time seeking that familiar attitude inside himself. That place where he can reside above his emotions. Still human enough to feel them, to experience them, but clear enough to focus over them. Free to function.

  Lil Chris feels jumpy for some reason. He banishes the thought. That ain’t gangsta. Continues to nibble on his Snickers bar.

  Just outside the fence from where they are walkin’, an inmate trustee passes by driving a riding lawnmower. Gray-headed and buff, like maybe he used to lift heavy weights. Probably still does.

  A bird is chirpin’ somewhere off in the distance. The air is balmy.

  He and PowwWoww slide through the Walnut/Hickory gate. Get jammed up at a security station where they checkin’ for passes. Lil Chris is spookin’. He just knows the gate man is gonna bust them for cuttin’ work call. He’s had misgivings since PowwWoww popped up in the dorm after breakfast and talked him into hidin’ behind the hobby shop until the fieldlines finished checkin’ out.

  After getting passes signed for the law library, they shuffle forward a few steps at a time. The prisoners in front of them take off their belts and shoes and empty their pockets before they step through the metal detector and show their passes to the gate man.

  Off to the side, he notices another line. More inmates in kitchen whites and denim coveralls. They move nonstop through the West Yard gate from Oak and Pine side like this checkpoint don’t apply to them.

  A group of ’em catch his attention. They’re no different from the rest. Except, as they come up on PowwWoww coming out of the metal detector, they tense up. Look like dogs heeling or some shit, this strain on their faces as they slip by him and through the gate, careful to avoid any incidental contact. Lil Chris frowns, confused for only a second before he has to turn his attention back to his boots and belt and the key sergeant standing at the gate. Fleetingly, he marks the smirk in the gate man’s smug expression.

  Rise shivers slightly as Ms. Waverly moves past him in the narrow spaces between the rows of student desks. The soft fabric of her blouse brushes his torso. She isn’t wearing perfume, but the smell of her coats his lungs. And, for that brief instance when she was close, there was this clear sense of the warmth and weight of her soft mass. But far from lingering on that, he’s already bending to hear what one of his students is asking about a math assignment.

  Where is Mike? He thinks despairingly. He went around the corner by the club offices for a cup of coffee like 30 minutes ago. Rise glances at the doorway, hoping to find his inmate colleague standing there holding steaming styrofoam cups. Damn shame they have to bum that type of shit. Rise believes, strongly, that the inmate clubs should be donating to the education department. That wouldn’t be a handout. More like a reimbursement. Most of the club heads were students at one time or another. Most of their membership still are. Yet, teachers are usually the most underappreciated. Disrespectful mu’fuckas.

  “Quarterly testing is coming up,” Ms. Waverly is saying. “So you all really need to be working over your needs assessment charts. Let’s pull those lower battery scores up.”

  “Say, Rise.” One of the older homies a couple desks down signals for help. The old guy stares, perplexed at a fact/opinion worksheet. Damn, Rise thinks. Why? One of the hardest things to teach a grown man is the easy difference between fact and opinion.

  “You had this down when we went over it yesterday,” Rise reminds him, looking over the man’s incorrect answers. “How did it get away from you?”

  “Man, this shit is crazy,” the man stresses. “I thought about what you said. I even went over it in the dorm last night with a few fellas.”

  “Okay, so you been on it. What’s the problem?”

  The old guy exhales, exasperated. “Well, you said a fact is something can be proven. Ah, with evidence. And that opinion is just what somebody think.”

  That’s not all of it, Rise thinks. But what he says is, “Uh huh. So what’s the problem?”

  “Well, I ain’t talkin’ slick or nothin’. But how can opinion just be what people think? One of the people I talked to last night said that with the right evidence you can start with any opinion and make it a fact. Even a lie. And, I think that’s true, too, cause that’s how the D.A. put a lot of us here in prison.”

  Rise looks at the old man for a second.

  “Okay, big bro,” he says. “Let’s grind this out.”

  Lil Chris and PowwWoww stand at the MPO’s bars, waiting to get into the Education Building. Lil Chris feels some type o’ way about somethin’ that happened along their route.

  When they passed by the kitchen, PowwWoww stopped in the cut to talk to this wobbly lookin’ dude in skin-tight jeans. The skin of his cheek and chin shone like he cleaned it with Magic Shave powder.

  Anyway, the whole time they were runnin’ it, the dude kept reaching out and touchin’ PowwWoww. On his arm. His elbow. Rubbin’ on his shoulder. All the while he was standin’ right there with the two of them. They wasn’t talkin’ about nothin’. The shit just didn’t feel right. He files the impression away as the bars slide open, affordin’ them entrance into the building.

  While everyone else falls into a line leadin’ to yet another security station, PowwWoww darts through a door to the right. Lil Chris follows. They go no farther than the stairs down to the entrance to the Law Library, where PowwWoww peeks in and throws the deuces as if to say hello, then turns to head back the other way. As he passes by Lil Chris, PowwWoww mumbles, “Act natural. It’s cameras in here. Come on.”

  At that, he follows him down the hall, up the staircase to the second floor, and down a hallway with four or five classrooms packed with a bunch of fools sitting at desks like they in high school or some shit. Before they get to the end of the hall, PowwWoww stops and pushes through a door that leads to a nice-sized restroom.

  “Watch the door,” PowwWoww says as he unbuckles his belt.

  “Watch the door?” Lil Chris echos, incredulously. “Mayne, if you gotta shit, I’ma go back and wait in the law library.”

  “Mayne, chill out,” PowwWoww says, chucklin’ while he shoves his hand down the back of his pants. He comes back out with his hand cupped and steps over to the sink, fishing in his pants pocket with his other hand. The air in the restroom has gone musky. Got the C’ster battling a mixture of revulsion and curiosity.

  PowWoww comes out of his pocket with a small plastic bottle of hand sanitizer. By the time he finishes playing with whatever it is in his hand, Lil Chris feels someone push against the door.

  “Hol’ up,” Lil Chris says.

  “Who dat?” PowwWoww says.

  Neither of them talking loud, but the room’s acoustics amplifies their words. Rather than answer up, whoever it is knocks two times.

  “Let him in,” PowwWoww says.

  Lil Chris stands aside.

  Black dude. Black, black. Heavy set. Low cut. He walks in and angles straight over to PowwWoww. Not a move wasted.

  PowwWoww comes out of the sink with what Lil Chris can now make out as a slim roll of money wrapped tight in plastic.

  When he hands it to big boy, he asks, “It’s all there?”

  PowWoww’s face goes cold. “You serious?”

  Tension.

  Big boy comes out his pocket with a roll of something wrapped in black electric tape. It’s thicker than a white boy dick. Where PowwWoww gon’ put that at?

  They make the trade. Big boy leaves.

  PowwWoww pulls out some greazy-ass lip balm.

  Lil Chris blurts out, “Mayne, you a punk or some’m?
”

  “Okay, so lets go over it, again,” Rise says as he glances at the doorway. Mike still hasn’t shown up with the java, but just before he looks away he spots two young dudes passing by. One of them is the kid from orientation a few weeks back. Damn, Rise thinks. Lil daddy in school, already?

  “Fact ain’t just what can be proved wit’ evidence,” the old man says. “A fact is something that is true whether you think it is or not.”

  “Right,” Rise confirms.

  “A fact ain’t just what can be proved wit’ evidence,” the old man continues. “A fact is the evidence.”

  “Now you got it,” Rise agrees. “Furthermore, the D.A. is not on the scene when the crime happens. Their job is to collect the facts and draw an opinion about what the facts mean. In court, the facts are like cards in a poker game. They are what they are. You have to build the best hand from what’s there.”

  “Uh-huh. The D.A. can line the facts up like that, to make a lie look like the truth.”

  “Right, again, big bro,” Rise says. “The winner is usually the one who can see the best hand. And, that ain’t always the one who has the best hand, my man. That’s why those math exercises are so important, too, big bro. Those numbers ain’t just for counting. It’s not just about memorizing your time tables. With math we gain discipline in our thinking. We learn to see what we can’t argue with. And, what we can. The number and the variable. Fact and opinion. Why they say men lie, women lie, numbers don’t lie.”

  The man just looks at Rise this time. With unspoken gratitude. He finally gets it. “The old folks use to ask,” he begins, “if a tree fall in the woods and nobody there to hear it, do it make a sound?”

  With that, Rise stands up straighter. Mike just showed up with the coffee.

  The day drags on painfully slow. Thankfully, his work assignment is an enterprise from which he can draw some sense of fulfillment. The student prisoners often leave him drained. He’s learned that it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks, but the effort is hard labor.

  Presently, he’s been at his desk for some time talking to Gary Law. G, as he’s simply referred to, is a political prisoner. He’s a casualty of the south’s turbulent reorganizing program, a living reminder of the consequences of the nation’s move from the oppression of Jim Crow to Civil Rights inclusion.