With the house they used every morning to chill in filled with stolen merchandise, Whip was determined to bring one of the televisions to the work spot to have something to watch when things got slow. Clay knew his boy Whip was easily impressed by irrelevant stuff, so he let him do his thing. If throwing Whip a little extra to keep him happy and loyal, so be it.
Seeing the girl from the bus stop coming back from wherever she’d went to, Whip tried to impress her, promising an iPod or at least a MP3 Player whenever they hooked up. Hopefully, by midnight, Whip planned to be banging the young mother’s back out the frame.
Dorie wasn’t in the mood for dealing with the neighborhood rats or the many problems that they had with them. He gathered his belongings and made his way to the front porch. Yawning, he made the announcement he had a date with a hot shower and his own bed.
When asked was he hanging with Ida’s granddaughter tonight, Clay didn’t smile one bit, remaining silent, obviously in deep thought.
Making sure everything was everything and the spot was secure, all three, Clay, Whip, and Dorie, parted ways for the night.
* * *
The next morning, Clay woke up, alone this time, with a new attitude in his game plan for the day. Strangely for him, he couldn’t stop thinking about the old woman on the block who basically needed twenty dollars to survive. That was the same amount he spent on juice and chips in one hour. When he got on the block today, he was going to make sure the grandmotherly woman would be set, at least for a few months. He thought about how her family must not have been about much, but that wasn’t gonna stop his mission and what he had in mind.
Turning his cell back on after constant calls from who could only be Rhonda all night long, Clay was met with over seven voice mails and eight texts confirming that she was either crazy as a fuck or yearning for an ass kicking. Silly trick spend the night a few nights in a row and think they the wife—these birds these days! Clay got dressed and left, heading for the hood for another day of same ole same.
As he and his team arrived on the block, Clay saw many of the same faces, waiting for that early-morning blast to get their day started. Customers waiting on them signified they still had good strong product and the day would flow smooth. Dorie had done what he said, getting a good night’s sleep, and was in the right state of mind to get money—no distractions. Whip, however, on the other hand, had stayed up half the night knocking the value off the ghetto broad from the bus stop. In between listening to her babies cry, smoking weed, drinking shots of Hennessy, and trying to stop her from asking so many questions about his boss Clay—he was wired up, ready to explode.
Preoccupied, still thinking about the old woman from the day before at CVS, Clay glanced up at the window he would sometimes see her looking out of. Peeping across the street, he then saw the same uppity, smoked-out woman pull up in the silver Toyota Corolla to cop. He shook his head and smirked that she always acted as if she was better than the rest of their clientele. When in all due honesty, she was just another crackhead in search of a head blast. After making sure his team was up and pumping, Clay informed both Dorie and Whip that he was going to make a run and would be back in a few.
“Hey, y’all, hit me up if that old lady upstairs leave out,” he firmly demanded as a Water Department van suspiciously drove past. The sound of the occupants’ voices made all three, including nosy Reverend Richards that was walking up on Mr. Jessie’s porch, take notice.
“What old lady?” Whip questioned, looking around confused as he brushed his deep waves, craving a beer. “And who the hell was that in that motherfucker looking all hard this way?”
“Dawg,” Clay nodded his head upward at the window with the beige lace curtains while watching the dark blue van disappear off the block, “the one the crazy basehead over there in that Toyota almost knocked down the other day—that old lady. Think, Whip!”
“Ohhhh, yeah, okay, her,” Whip vaguely remembered the incident despite all the weed he smoked and Lean he drank. “Why you give a damn about her leaving? What, she calling the police like that good-snitching faggot over there?” He pointed to Mr. Jessie, who, for once, was sitting on his front porch with his wife, minding his own business before their ordained visitor arrived. “Want me to bust her over the head with her cane? ’Cause I can—it’s nothing!”
“What the fuck you say about doing to her?” Immediately hyped and heated in the moment, Clay loudly cut him off from the mini-interrogation Whip was conducting. “Dawg—just do what the hell I said! Dorie, you need to talk to this hardheaded dude right here. He on some other type of crazy shit I ain’t feeling today. That rotten-boxed cat you got from that girl last night got you out of order! You being too extra! Check yourself before I do it for you! And, oh, yeah—give that uppity broad the smallest rock we got and make her rude ass stand in line just like everybody else!”
Dorie just shook his head at Whip and the foul mood he’d put Clay in as he pulled off. “Why you always getting under that guy skin? You know he’ll flip out at any time for anything!”
“Yeah, I know, but lately, he really been on edge, like a ticking time bomb!” Whip made notice while pointing for the “better than the next smoker” to get to the end of the line as Clay had instructed. “Something just ain’t right in dawg head!”
Chapter Seven
Trinity Walker
Damn, I really played myself last night for this old thang. I could’ve came up if I would’ve just kept my legs closed and my mouth shut. Fumbling with the headphones and iPod Whip had given her the night before in what could only be labeled payment for some ass, Trinity was now regretting him hitting the pussy every which way but loose. Dang, I sucked that crazy drunk fool off twice and even fucking swallowed, and he gives me this shit right here and a few dollars for grocery and diapers! At least I don’t have to go to the freaking Outreach Building today for food and deal with that mess! But, damn, I hope he don’t tell Clay we got down!
Each step the young slum-minded mother took while pushing both children stuffed in a stroller made for one, was full of denial. After Clay coming to her rescue at the bus stop, she believed, if only in her naive mind, she now still had a chance with him even though his worker had been there, done that. The fact that she’d given Whip her cell number and not Clay that morning mattered none. In Trinity’s delusional fairy-tale way of thinking, Clay would have checked Whip for trying to push up on her in the first place and demand he give him the number. If his phone wouldn’t’a rung at that moment, he would’ve stepped to me instead of ole boy. I know he would’ve.
Her small mind raced with scattered mixed thoughts and emotions turning the iPod power on. Pausing to put both earphones in to drown out the sound of her smallest child crying, Trinity placed the volume as high as it could go, blasting the factory sample predownloaded music. I wanna walk down there and see if Clay is posted yet, but Whip might be with him. Continuing to push the dirty secondhand stroller through the rough crime-infested neighborhood, the otherwise street-educated female navigated her way toward the grocery store, passing a few late-for-school stragglers.
“Hello, Miss Trinity,” the always polite young man spoke while cautiously glancing over his shoulder, holding his sibling’s hand. Both children’s faces appeared worried, but with them, that was normal.
Waving her hand up at the young Muslim teen and his little sister she would see every morning on their way to school, Trinity kept her pace up, wanting to get to the store and back before her shows came on.
Caught in her thoughts about what her life could be with Clay, especially if Whip kept his mouth shut, Trinity didn’t notice a dark-colored Ford cargo van with painted windows bend the corner and try to lure Abdul and his sister inside, offering them a ride to school. As the music blasting out of the earphones deadened the van’s muffler, along with the baby’s constant cries, she went across the shortcut everyone in the hood used. Eleven abandoned houses in a row with overgrown grass, thick bushes along with littered-f
illed vacant lots shielded her view from most people who didn’t know the area or dared not take that route. Trinity, however, felt the rules didn’t apply to her. That attitude is probably what caused her to bounce from foster home to foster home growing up.
Foolishly cutting across the alleyway, Trinity was stopped by the slow-cruising vehicle turning directly in her path. “Hey, what in the fuck? Don’t you see . . .” Before the words of anger could escape her mouth, the van came to a complete stop. Surprisingly, two men jumped out of the side of the vehicle’s sliding doors as the driver kept the loud van idling—serving as a lookout.
“Shut the fuck up. Ain’t nobody playing around with your slutty ass.”
Rushing up on her, the heavier of the two snatched Trinity by the waist with one hand, covering her mouth with the other, causing her to drop the iPod on the ground, shattering the screen. “Don’t say nothing. I mean it—not nothing!”
“Yeah, girl, don’t say shit. Just come give us some of that tight cat you got stuffed up in them little shorts!” With the right earphone plug still dangling, she now noticed they were Water Department employees by their badges and clothing. The next thing she knew, one of them had snatched both her kicking feet from the pavement.
Completely unable to break free, the young mother struggled to move. Knowing what was sure to come next, she squirmed, trying her best to fight them off. As she bit down on the side of the first man’s filthy hand, he raised his other, socking her in the side of her temple, almost knocking her unconscious. From then on, everything seemed to go in slow motion. Roughly tossing her down onto a pile of old shingles that undoubtedly had blown off a roof, her head turned to the side as her eyes filled with tears. Breast now exposed to the morning air, Trinity, numb, listened to her children’s cries of wanting their mother to keep pushing them. Somehow, the pair of blue uniformed rapists managed to practically rip her denim jean shorts almost completely off.
Fighting to see at least the dark-colored wheels of the baby stroller that was only feet away, Trinity shook with fear as the now three men argued over who was gonna get the pussy first. Inhaling the sewer musty smell of one kneeling over her with his manhood inches away from her mouth promising her and her kids death if she bit him, the normally feisty female had given up all hope of not becoming a statistic and decided to comply. Seconds after one man had entered her vagina and the other her mouth, the third man suddenly yelled out, being surprised by a gun being pointed in his face.
“Both of y’all dirty motherfuckers get the fuck up,” Clay’s voice shouted with intense anger. “Hurry the fuck up before I shoot y’all motherfucking dicks off! What in the fuck is wrong with y’all old, perverted fools—raping a woman with all this free pussy around here they giving away?” He now had all three men lined up along the rear of a garage as he helped a still-dazed, very-much ashamed and hysterical Trinity to her feet. “I outta blast all three of you fucked-up-in-the-head slimeball niggas. I knew some foul business was up when I seen this piece of junkyard-ready-Water-Department-shit y’all driving pulled up back here.”
Trinity tried to cover herself the best she could. Disoriented, she wobbled past the city-owned van over toward the stroller. Taking a light receiving blanket out of the bottom, she tried to at least wrap it around her still exposed vagina. Taking both crying kids out, she raised them up, hugging each one, not thinking she’d ever have another chance to do so.
“Wait, young dawg, wait,” the heavier guy with a gold tooth bargained for their lives. “She wanted to do it. She told us to come back here, and she’d hit us off for a little bit of change. That’s how it went down. I swear—she wanted it.”
“He lying, Clay; his ugly fat ass lying,” Trinity argued back, defending her character, putting both children back down. Now coming to her senses, getting pissed, she shouted across the alley, “I was just going to the store with my kids, and they jumped out of nowhere. I was minding my own goddamn business.” Enraged, she started to cry even more, ready to fight buck naked, it need be. “Y’all old bastards overpowered me. That one grabbed me from the back, and that motherfucker held my feet.” Trinity searched finding a huge sharp piece of metal near the very pile of shingles she was just on and lunged at them wanting revenge. “I’ma fuck y’all up! I’ma kill all y’all!”
Clay, already salty, wasn’t in the mood for the back-and-forth exchange. On a ten plus, he was far from a fool and hated being played for one. “Look, punk ass! Do it look like I’m slow or something like that? Even Stevie Wonder can see what the fuck y’all was doing. I should let ole girl fuck y’all asses up. I seen y’all earlier cruising the block like y’all was the police or some shit, and y’all out here on the clock,” Clay’s trigger finger grew extremely jumpy. “How many other females y’all done raped? How many little kids on they way to school y’all done stalked and molested? And how many old people y’all done fucked around and robbed? Damn predators, and y’all work for the Water Department! I’ma give y’all what you need!”
“It’s not like that,” the other one tried to proclaim while urinating on himself, wanting nothing more than to get back in the van unharmed, drive away, and turn off some poor family’s water, he begged. “Just let us go. We sorry, man. Just let us go or call the police.” Knowing with the latter of the two, they would at least have a chance to fight the case.
“Police? Call the damn police? Around here, I am the fucking police around these parts! I’m the mayor of this zip code. Y’all should’ve done y’all homework before y’all came to this hood with that nonsense—raping a female in front of her kids. But on some for real for real, y’all definitely gonna learn today.” Clay had a menacing grin on his face, letting the three uniformed workers along with Trinity know that wasn’t gonna happen. Wasn’t nobody getting “just let go” and wasn’t no police that wasn’t gonna show up nohow, getting called; at least not without some blood being shed for retribution for them having the nerve to come into his neighborhood trying to violate.
“Come on now, homeboy, please!” The driver negotiated for his own life, throwing his partners in crime underneath the bus. “I didn’t even touch her! Ask her—I didn’t! I didn’t even want to do it!”
“All y’all nasty old motherfuckers got exactly five seconds to decide whose dick she gonna cut off with the metal shit she holding, or I’m shooting the shit outta all three of y’all freak asses. Everybody gonna be leaking!” Clay was infuriated, taking this violation personal.
“Noooo . . . nawww!” The trio didn’t know whether to risk running and get shot in the back or take their chances and try to rush Clay. But in the meantime, Clay’s clock was ticking, and Trinity, now back in “hood mode,” was ready to attack.
“One, two . . .”
“Wait! Wait! Hold up!” Each stared down the barrel of the pistol.
“three . . . Hurry the hell up and decide. I’ma empty this thang,” he swore as the countdown continued and his gun begged to be fired. “four . . . five. Okay, fellas, what’s it gonna be? Who gonna go home without one?”
“Nawww,” the pleas for mercy went on as no one on the deserted block was there to hear them.
Trinity wanted to cut all three of her attackers and let it be boisterously known. “I’ma slice all y’all shit off to the balls!” she ranted breathing hard.
Clay felt the young mother had been through enough and ordered her to go put the stroller in his truck. “You and the kids go chill out. I got this.” Wanting to get some sort of revenge before she left it in his hands, Trinity dropped the metal to the debris-littered concrete replacing it with a rusty hollow pipe. Drawing back with all her might, practically naked, she struck both men in the face who had violated her, knocking them off balance. Satisfied after seeing blood gush out from their foreheads, she did as Clay suggested.
Sitting in the SUV, she rubbed the side of her throbbing head while peering out the passenger-side window. Only moments after watching Clay march the men behind a cluster of bushes in between tw
o barely standing garages, Trinity heard a barrage of gunfire. Expressionless, her outta-the-blue hero emerged, heading toward the truck, strolling past the blue cargo van as if he had just stopped to take a piss. Bending down, he picked up her destroyed screen iPod, throwing it across a vacant field as far as he possibly could. When he got inside the truck, he then noticed a bare-assed Trinity sitting next to him, with her breast partially out for all to see. Getting back out, he opened the hatch. Next to a few bags of groceries he’d just bought was a red duffle bag. He grabbed an old pair of track pants and T-shirt he worked out in for the distraught female to throw on.
With no words passed between the two and the radio volume down on whisper, he drove around nearly twenty minutes, getting his thoughts together as the two kids in the back slept. Finally, he looked over at the young mother who was also silent, reflecting on what’d taken place and spoke.
“Hey, what’s your name, anyhow?”
“It’s Trinity.”
“Trinity?” he repeated in question.
“Yeah and for real, I wanna thank you. This the second time you done had my back.”
“We good, ma. As far as I’m concerned,” he made sure she was looking him eye to eye, “this morning never happened, right? None of it.”
“Right,” she happily agreed, wanting nothing more than the entire thought of the episode to disappear from her memory. “It never happened.”
“Okay, Trinity, where exactly you live at?”
“I stay on Fullerton.”
“Fullerton?”
“Yeah, two blocks down from your spot.”
“My spot?” Clay finally smiled—his first of the day. “What you know about my spot?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I just meant—”
“Naw, I was just bullshitting,” Clay grinned, winking his eye. “We good. It ain’t nothing. What’s your address so I can drop you and your kids off?”
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