As the black community acquired more of a voice, took over city government, and also drew the interest of Drug Warriors among local and federal law enforcement, it became hazardous for the old feral matrix to stand. Not only were affluent drug dealers able to arm themselves in a paramilitary fashion and gather about their persons armed gangs to thwart local attempts at vigilante order, but a man’s previous right to fight in the street was also now brought to an end, or left on a more perilous footing. Now that church leaders and concerned fathers could no longer count on decent men to impose social order on pimps and drug dealers and rapist and wife beaters, the black middle class fled the city in droves, leaving traditional practitioners of the African American Justice System, such as The Mac Daddy feeling like dinosaurs gazing up into the azure sky at an approaching comet.
That Thang
#59-05: night, minutes, first-person aggressor
“Ya mean da scar ova da right eye? Oh yeah, dat a chump-scar…
“Ova a ho ma brutha, ova a ho. Some ho—fine enough fo The Mac Daddy, but too fine fo da chump she was wit. Ya know, bein’ a lady a taste, she want The Mac Daddy, wantin’ ta give up That Thang—en the chump don’ comprehend dat he out-classed. So The Mac Daddy gotta smack’im down—where is chump-ass belong!
“…In the street ma brutha, in the street –whoopin’ dat chump-ass. The Mac Daddy weren’t ‘is full two-eighty at dat young age. But he whoopin’ ass ma brutha, whoopin’ that nigga’s ass!
“…No grabin’ o’ holdin’, no wrastlin’ o’ any a dat; jus beatin’ the reality into ‘is chump-ass!
“The Mac Daddy too much fo da nigga, an da ho fine wit’it. She already lookin’ ta lay it up on da table—The Mac Daddy en That Thang was a destination, a realization of The Mac Daddy popalaridy—and da chump couldn’t hang wit dat. So he crack The Mac Daddy upside da head from behine wit a bottle. That when the ass-whoopin’ begin in earnest—nigga payin’ en prayin’!
“Then the poleese sirens. Now, The Mac Daddy nor da chump there to get arrested. So it come time to haul ass! A course, da ho eventually lay That Thang up on da table for The Mac Daddy, en da chump jus got ta deal wit’it. The Mac Daddy were happy wit That Thang and that…was that.”
I apologize to you students of the English language, but I was feeling misty over a recent separation and just had to include a story with a fairy tale ending.
