I had stayed at my baby mamma’s house drinking and smoking weed—all weeded up. I was still in the game. It was in 2001. She asked me to stay the night, but I was hard-headed and wanted to get home, so I went out, late.

I was walking down the sidewalk and this one dude hollas at me fo a cigarette and I can see his cleave that he got a gun in the waist band, so I give him the cigarette and then he pulls that gun out and points it at my head. But I know guns, en it don’ got no clip.

He’s like, “You know what dis is, I’ll shoot your big ass” and I’m like, “Nigga, if you was serious you’d a done did it.”

That’s when his homie, who I had seen earlier leanin’ up against the building come runnin’ up behin’ me. I had figured they was together—en you know how you hear that sound a sneakers, so I turn en he’s jumpin’ like Spidaman down at me. Dese was both skinny lille niggas. He got a knife with a serrated edge en a hook on da back coming down on me [mimes ice-pick grip], en I grab him like so [mimes two handed grab of each of smaller man’s biceps] and sling his ass out into da street.

Now I’m tusslin’ wit da nigga ta my front and he threw the gun at my head, which I duck and I smash [mimes double-shoulder grab] his head agains’ the wall.

Then the other nigga is stabbin’ me in da arm from behin’ [penetrates bicep at tendon and brachial artery] en I kicked in his leg, broke his fucking leg. I was terrified that dese two was gonna ged up, cause I was leakin’—dis shit was pumpin’ blood arcing out, which became worse when the knife was pulled out [unclear if Big C. or the attacker pulled the fish-gutting knife out of his right bicep].

I stomped da dogshit out a dese niggas, broke a collar bone, broke ribs, brome a shin bone. Broke a fema. They was all narrow and unda foot and I didn’ want dem comin’ back on me while I was losin’ presha. Den I run and foget evrythang, fell out about from here to dat door [20 feet].

I found out later, ‘cause I was unconscious fo tree days, died once on the sidewalk, got revived and died again in the hospital and got revived, dat dere was dis old man with one a dose breathing masks on, sitting by his front window watchin’ dis shit. He come outside and took the two rubber straps from his mask and tied me off above and below the wound—this shit [points to inside of right elbow, lower upper arm] was hangin’ loose, all tore out.

I woke up tree days later and I remember dis nurse standing there saying, “Welcome back to the world of the living.” I will never forget that. And the wife or the old man and the old man dat saved me were sitting dere lookin’ ova me.

[diction clears in retrospective mode]

But my forearm was turning black, skin just peeling off. The intern that worked on me at Hopkins didn’t hook my shit back up. This shit was bad, the whole lower arm turning black.

Then, to show you how blessed I was, there was this boss doctor, the doctor that trains other doctors, like the master mechanic, who was driving from Florida up to New York for his daughter’s baby delivery. He even did that shit too, delivered babies. He found out, when he got to Baltimore, that it was a false alarm. That’s how I learned what Braxton-Hicks was. So he decided to tour the hospitals and see who needed help. He was a masta surgeon. So he aks, “Whose your worst case,” en dey brung him ta me.

He saved my arm, set dis shit right. Now, when the tendons heeled it bent up ma fingers some and a spent a total of a year in Johns Hopkins, a year of ma life. When I got ta court wit dem two dudes, they was all fucked up. Da one dude’s head was like [mimes a blown up balloon] en dey boff maimed fo life, legs all crooked en shit. I put dem da fuck out da game. The judge was like, in so many judge words, “We’ll ya’all got fucked up pretty good…”

[laughter]

The author and Nero the Pict toast Big C. a hero and the conversation veers towards the worst jobs they ever had…