“Show us that shit then. Unless you just bullshittin’?”
“I ain’t bullshittin’! I’ll show you.”
We walked with him across McCallum Street and onto Pomona on our way to the big empty lot between Cherokee Street and G-town Avenue. My skin was vibrating with excitement as if it was going to dance right off my body. It was the way I imagined crack fiends felt all the time. Somehow I knew that everything was about to change for us. I wish I could say now that I’d felt the warning signs, that I’d had some type of premonition, some foreboding of the evil we were about to step into. But all I felt was the greed. All I was thinking about was the cash and the gun and what I would do with it when I got it. Now I know that it had to happen this way. Evil draws evil.
The lot was overgrown with weeds and filled with big rats that crawled out of the sewers to eat the garter snakes, salamanders, and trash. We walked carefully, looking out for the larger rats that were known to bite kids. Demetrious bent down and turned over a huge slab of asphalt that had probably been thrown there years before during some type of road repair project.
“Yo, man here it is!” He held up a big shiny silver automatic that looked strangely familiar, “See, nigga? I told you I wasn’t just frontin’!” His features brightened into a proud smug expression as he brandished the impressive looking handgun. That’s when I stepped back and really took stock of the kid I was about to victimize.
He was as tall as me though slightly more filled out. A year older than me though obviously not as bright. His clothes were brand new. A typical hoodrat whose parents spent all their money on clothes and jewelry while their homes fell further and further into disrepair. He wore a Sixers jacket and a pair of Air Jordans, ridiculously oversized FUBU jeans that hung halfway off his diminutive ass, and a long T-shirt that came down to his knees that read “North Philly”. He wore a silver necklace with a huge crucifix attached to it. The biggest sinners were always the most religious.
His hair was cut short except for four or five inch long dreadlocks at the very front of his head. He wore what looked like a half-carat diamond stud in his left ear. I was sickened and insulted by Demetrious’ flashy affluence amid our conspicuous poverty and I decided right then and there that I had to have that Sixers jacket, those sneakers, and that jewelry even if this kid had to die.
“Yo, lemme see that shit.” I said casually; reaching out for the big heavy gun as if the last thing on my mind was rollin’ him for those two gees. He wasn’t a total fool, though, and my reputation for doin’ crazy shit proceeded me.
“Naw, dog. You ain’t never handled no gat. You might kill somebody with your crazy ass.”
“I’ve fired ’em before. Let me see tha mutherfucka.” Huey said in his cold raspy monotone sounding like wind whispering through a morgue. Huey looked like Lenny Kravitz or Maxwell, like he should have been on stage singing a love ballad rather than in the hood with us, but he was perhaps the most vicious of all of us and damned sure the spookiest. He knew what I was up to and so he stepped forward and pinned Meech down with his hard adult eyes, hollow and dangerous as shotgun shells. There was nothing in that glassy amphibian stare that could be appealed to, still Meech tried anyway.
“Hey, Yo, I don’t know, man. I mean you cool and all but…”
Demetrious squirmed and stammered as if he could feel Huey’s lifeless eyes crawling over his flesh probing for weaknesses.
“But nuthin’ then. I ain’t even gonna shoot tha muthafucka. I just wanna hold it. You know, check it out and shit.”
Huey inched closer to him and his voice dropped to a smooth seductive whisper. Demetrious was hypnotized as Huey’s lithe cappuchino colored fingers slid across his and slowly lifted the gun from his hands . I pushed back the memory of those same agile hands slipping a weapon out of my hands just a year ago and turning it on my father.
“A-a-awight man. You can hold it. But just you, okay?” Demetrious said, adjusting the silver cross dangling over his chest and cutting a quick glance at me. People were always more scared of me than of Huey for some reason; until they got to know him better. I wore my craziness on the outside like a uniform. Huey’s madness festered and boiled inside of him just beyond his eyes. It took a while to notice it.
Huey gripped the huge pistol by the handle with two hands. He checked the clip then jacked a round into the chamber, clicked off the safety and handed it to me. Sunlight glinted off the metal and my eyes took up the gleam.
“Yo, man! Don’t chamber no rounds! That shit could go off! And I don’t want this crazy-ass-nigga touchin’ it! Gimme that shit!”
“Just chill, Bro. Don’t trip.” Huey said as he stepped around to block Meech from snatching the gun, which would’ve been a fatal mistake.
“Naw, fuck that! I don’t want this psycho muthafucka fuckin’ around with my gat! Gimme that shit!” He reached for it and I pushed him back. Tank stepped up next to Huey and his tremendous girth literally blocked the sun. He stared down at Demetrious who seemed to be near panic, and grinned like a Downs Syndrome child with a mouthful of feces.
Tank was fourteen years old now and he was already as big as a heavyweight boxer, about 6’ 3” and 230lbs.
“You ain’t gonna let this punk bitch talk to you like that and get away with it is you, Snap?”
Snap was my nickname, earned because of my anger management issues and impulse control problems.
“Grab that nigga, Tank.”
Tank scooped Meech up like a sack of groceries, wrapping one of his thick meaty arms around Demetrious’ throat; not choking him, but preventing him from escaping. The other arm caught Meech’s right arm in an underhook. Meech fought and kicked to get free of Tank’s stranglehold, but there was no way he could free himself from the much larger boy. I stepped up and pressed the barrel of the gun against his right eye.
“I bet this muthafucka could blow the whole side of your head apart.” My eyes started getting that wild look as I remembered the way that Rasta’s head had flown to pieces and imagined this kid’s brains splattering across the grass. My breath came quicker and quicker in short ragged bursts. My blood raced through my veins carrying healthy loads of adrenaline. I wanted to do him. For no particular reason I wanted to smoke that fool. Just to see what it would look like.
“Come on, dog. Quit playin’! Don’t point that at me, dude! It could go off! Come on! Let me go! Quit playin’! Let go!”
“Nigga, do I look like I’m playin’ with your bitch ass?!”
Growing up in the projects of North Philadelphia, Demetrious had seen enough violence to know that this certainly wasn’t no joke. He started struggling harder and Tank was beginning to have a difficult time holding him.
“Bro, you better calm down right now or I’ll drop you right here. Word to God. If you say one more fuckin’ word I’ll split your wig wide open.” I had looked in the mirror often enough to know exactly what Meech saw on the other end of that gun; one big, black, crazy muthafucka who didn’t give a fuck about nothing.
Demetrious tried to change his approach and began begging and whining.
“Come on, Snap. I thought we was boys, man?”
Even though Snap was my nickname, at that time I was still ambiguous about it. It was okay for my friends to call me Snap, but some nigga I hardly knew?
“Bitch, I ain’t your fuckin’ boy! These is my boys right here.” I said, gesturing towards Tank and Huey. “I could give a fuck about your punk ass! Now what’s up with that cheddar, fool?”