“All the medicine you can buy

All the doctors you can find,

You got to take sick and die some of these days”

-Muddy Waters

Jack was sporting a high fade—that afro in the past. The platform shoes were home in the closet, but he still wore the sharpest threads, and his Air Jordans would be better for throwing down in case some fool at the club gave him any lip on account of Jillneequa running her mouth all the time.

The shocks were rocking tight on his ’79 butter brickle yellow Monte Carlo. And Jillneequa, she might be a bitch and all, but she sure was looking fine, bouncing almost out of that top every time he hit a pot hole. Of course she had to protest. “What dumbass nigga you have put these shocks on Jack?”

“I did this shit myself girl. How do you think I can afford to take your trifling ass to the club?”

She smacked her lips, cracked her gum, and bobbed her head, but then thought twice about sassing Jack Dynomite and regarded the back of his ready hand as he loosened it on the wheel with a considered, “Nigga please, my brutha Tyrell will put yo pretty boy ass in the ground if you so much as touch this.”

Knowing Tyrell to be the genuine hood rat from hell, and knowing this woman to have a temper like quick-fire, Jack reluctantly let the fuse on his stick fizzle out.

As he turned left onto Route Forty he heard the “whew, whew” of a police car, saw the cop in his rearview mirror, and pulled over to the side right into a stream of piss that some wino was letting go from the curb.

Jillneequa swore in disgust, “Is you stupit nigga—hey, get the fuck back and piss on some otha car fo I rip yo dick off!”

The wino made tracks, peeing all over himself in the process, even as Jack heard the sound of the car door slamming shut behind him. Thank God they had just crossed the County line and were not in the City were some city cop would beat his ass just for the fun of it.

Jack got his license and registration out of the glove box while the cop was creasing his shirt, and then rolled down the window as he approached. He was doubly relieved as this was not only a county cop, but a brother at that, a big muscle bound football player type.

“Hello officer, how may I help you?”

The cop bent over to look him right in the eye and said, in a country accent, “Oh, I was just going to compliment you on the butter brickle paint jabb—tight, real tight. And then you pulled over without signaling first, so I’ll be giving you a citation.”

“Oh that shit is funny officer. Whew, I thought I was in trouble or something. Ma brutha gots a sense a humor!”

The cop then set his jaw and snarled through clenched teeth, “So you think I ain’t shit ‘cause I a county cop? Is that it city niցցer?”

“No officer, not at all, I was just—”

“You were just assuming that I’d let you off easy ‘casue I’m black, is that it boy?”

Jack leaned back in defeat against the seat and held the license and registration up slackly. The officer snatched that shit right out of his hand and walked back to his car.

Jillneequa was all over it, “Jack Dynomite? Really, you let that country niցցer talk all over you like that? Sheeit Tyrell would have done already—”

“Got hisself kilt or locked up, that’s what he’d a done bitch!”

“Bitch? Who you callin’ bitch, bitch? I only see one bitch ass nigga in this car.”

“Baby, don’t push it.”

“Push it, push it? Somebody got to push it, ‘cause you sho ain’t. You leave yo dick at home? Or was that a dildo you lay on me last night? Seems ta me that I got the only set a balls up in here.”

“By the looks of the hair on yo lip maybe that shit is true!”

“Oh no you didn’—leave the lip alone. Yo ass wasn’t complainin’ last night while these lips was suckin’ that dick was you? Was you—bitch!”

“Look, Jillneequa, let’s just be cool. Let’s get through this.”

“Oh you know I cool nigga, you know it. En I’ll be cool as ice when I slit you muvafucin’ throat next time you start that lip shit—hear me nigga?”

“Yes, whateva whateva, I hear you.”

“Oh thank God you’re back officer. Did everything check out?”

The cop then got pink in the face and gray around the eyes as they bugged out in anger and said, “Get the fuck out of the car city niցցer—now!”

Before he knew it he was being pulled from the car and slammed across the hood and frisked.

“What I do yo, what I do?”

“Yo, you callin’ me a yo boy?”

“Please officer, please—I didn’t do nothing,” he pleaded as he was cuffed super tight so that his hands felt like they were going to pop off.

“You didn’t do nothin’ but assume I was some soft country cracka is all—County cops ain’t shit—I heard it all before son!”

He then felt his eye roll around in his head as something harder than a fist hit him above the right eye. His ear than rang like a fire alarm. He could not see out of his right eye or hear out of his right ear. But he could hear Jillneequa screaming for him to fight back, and making threats to the cop. His right kidney lit up like fire, and his knee, good God, his knee felt like it was broke and he was falling down the front of the car, his face scraping across the grill and then bouncing off the bumper and then smashing with a bloody tasting squish on the asphalt.

He heard the car door slam shut and saw her high ho heels right in front of him up on the curb and heard her running her mouth at the cop.

“Shit nigga, I knew cops cain’t hit, but dis shit is ray-dick-you-luss. You call that a whoopin’?”

Something hard and cold smashed into the side of his head and sent sparks shooting through his one seeing eye.

“Oh, I’m gonna sue da shit outta yer dumb cop ass as soon as I get done lookin’ at this sorry shit—can’t even hit like a man but needs hisself a flash light—bitch-ass cops!”

Jillneequa was being pulled away by some other cop as he mumbled against the rough asphalt, “Please Baby, jus’ leave it be.”

He then heard the voice of a white cop, “Did you hear that shit Johnson, he’s callin’ you Baby? You can’t whoop that ass any harder than that?”

The hard toe of a shoe sunk into his ribs on the left and picked him up so far that he rolled over on his back, his wrists feeling like they were snapping beneath him and his lungs on fire. He looked up to see the black cop and the white cop standing over him. The white cop was even bigger, and had a mean voice, where the black cop just seemed out of breath and pissed off. “That’s more like it Johnson.”

And the big white man in uniform lifted his foot and brought the heel down into Jack’s mouth even as he was trying to say, “Ple—”

But all that came out was teeth and the blood that filled his one good eye and blocked out his sight for good.