Who says there's no honor among thieves? The best criminals live by a very strict code. Especially in the Gutter....
And rule #1: you don't fuck with kids..
And rule #1: you don't fuck with kids..
Heavy Lego by Beau Johnson
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OK. So here’s the deal.
Most messed up thing I ever done was cut a dude in two. This takes
talent. And very steady hands. Doesn’t hurt I’d worked out all my life, but
that’s neither here nor there. What matters is how true my hands had to be to
pull something like this off. I split the damn bastard
right across the equator.
I am by no means a good guy, not in the clearest sense of
the word, and I would never want such a thing misconstrued. I am not “bad”
either; the line I ride is fine. Drugs and addiction are the reasons why. I
will not wrap it, what I am, so take it or leave it; I couldn’t really give a
fuck.
***
***
“How much is you lookin’ for?” Except for his voice, Virgil
was a cross between Eric LaSalle and a young Ving Rhames. Dressed in grey
slacks, a beater tee, with enough gold so his neck would never need a gym, he
was the undisputed king of 5th and Dime.
“Twenty, yo,” I say through the bars and screen. Usually I
just wait there on his porch, my dick in my hand, until Virgil decides to saunter
back with what I ordered. Why today played out differently, I will never know.
“Have a seat, m’man. Take a load off. All Big Daddy wants to
do is talk a little.” I have never trusted people who refer to themselves in
the third person. This was how the big man talked, right down to the hand
gestures to his chest and the fondling of his junk.
It was dark too, and gloomy, the only real light coming in
through slats in the blinds. I asked: “Where’s T-J and Bench?”
“The crew’s done gone, dawg. Down to Haldone’s to get the
place some drink. Don’t mean no never mind, though—gives us the time to talk.”
I know. Fuck me, right? I had no choice, though, not since a particular letter of the alphabet had gotten her hooks into me.
I know. Fuck me, right? I had no choice, though, not since a particular letter of the alphabet had gotten her hooks into me.
In front of me sat a glass coffee table. Atop this table, all
the things I’d come to cherish: balloons and needles, papers and spoons. Scales
too, a pair of them, where I assumed Virgil weighed every ounce he’d ever
thrown my way. Above us, a ceiling fan droned on, me in the high back chair I’d
been led, Virgil on a leather couch. The ax I would come to use stared up at me
from bottom of the table. You didn’t need spider sense to know the reason it’d
been left there. Shit like that was bread and butter to men like Virgil, where
word of mouth could work like bullets. Sometimes better.
Now I think about it, I suppose it’s pretty much the reason
I went and arranged him the way I did.
“You like what you been gettin’, Clement? You think—” He
didn’t get to finish. The door behind me—the one that led to the cages I would
soon find out about—blew open.
A child no older than eight stood there. He
was white, this boy, pale, in nothing but his Fruit of the Looms. Wild eyed,
screaming, he moved towards the front door with a purpose I could relate to. He
did not stop once he reached the bars; no, he backed himself up and ran into
them again. And then one more time for good measure. I wanted to tell the kid
to stop, that it was locked and to just give us a minute, but my mind doesn’t
work that way. Might be because my father beat me that my mind does this, might
be because my mother did not. Only thing I know for certain is that you don’t
fuck with kids.
“What the hell?” Virgil was standing now, as was I, the both
of us truly astonished by the sight of the boy and his continued attempts to
escape. As they say, it is here that the shit got real.
I look at Virgil, my grill set, and you know what this
mutherfucker does in turn? It ain’t bake cookies, that’s for sure. We fight.
One black man. One brown. Drugs go flying. Needles too. And suddenly my back is
through the glass coffee table. I’m cut,
sure, but I’m more worried about the hands around my neck. Struggling, kicking,
watching darkness seep towards me from all sides. I reach out, grasp for anything,
a piece of table, syringe, carpet, anything, and then the handle of the ax is
in my hand and I swing it sideways and up and the blunt end takes Virgil in the
ear. It is enough to daze him. The next whack knocks him flat out.
I jump up, sucking air harder than I ever have. In the
corner by the door, the kid huddles, chicken bone arms around chicken bone
knees. I tell him to stay where he is, that he’s safe for the moment, and that
I just have to see. Down I go, hoping that what I’m about to find is not as
evil as I feared. One look at the cameras and the cages and I know I have never
been more wrong.
It is here that something shifts in my head and I realize
why the ax had yet to leave my hand. It surprised me, sure, but not as much as
you’d think.
What shocks me more is when the kid gets in on the action
and starts to help; when he grabs the top portion of Virgil by the arms and
tugs forward, big chunks of the man’s busted vertebrae falling out like heavy
Lego. Me, I take the legs, put about twelve feet of thick ribbon between us.
“That’s good, little man. It’ll due.” And it did. T-J and
Bench listening to every word I said with eyes wide and mouths agape, taking it
all in as they looked from one piece of Virgil to the other. “No more kids,” I
tell them; there was a new king in town.
I am by no means a good man, I tell them, nor am I bad, but
I have no problem riding the line to get me what I need.
They’d be wise to remember as much.
