The decrepit figure of Broke-Ass Rasheed wheeled up on his power chair, putting the one stiff leg of his that was strapped into the iron boot between the two power players, taking over the conversation as if it were his, looking obstinately from player to player from beneath his gray brows and above his steel wool-looking beard, and then repeating his question, or reformulating it rather, as the bells he wore all year long on his Nation of Islam flag and his Black Panther beret jingled in the cold, snow-spitting wind, “Riddle me that, Hoppers, what a poke-eatin’ set a fools like you know ‘bout Christmas, let alone Jew-Christmas?”
Nine retorted, “At least we celebrate that shit, Broke-Ass, not like you with yo militant, rice-eatin’ bullshit.”
Milkdud laughed out loud, only to be scolded by Broke-Ass Rasheed, who spared him not a look, but pointed the finger of blind disdain back over his shoulder in that direction, “At least a White Devil didn’t plant his vile seed up in my mamma and spawn a Lionel Richie lookin’ somebody!”
They all laughed at that, even Milkdud, who shook his head with a smile. With this approval, the man who once ran this corner “way back in the old-ass day,” now reduced to an advisor/mascot of the SSH Crew, who he admonished weekly—sometimes daily—for eating pork rinds and drinking liquor, continued. In truth, though a not often heeded advisor, Broke-Ass Rasheed was more than a mascot to the SSH Crew, for whom he served as a sort of social shield, as the crew could always pretend to be helping Rasheed or listening to his sidewalk sermons whenever the po-leese rolled on by.
His sermonious voice mixed with the patter of the wet snow and rose above their laughs and chuckles, “Yo all think my ass don’t know what goin’ on up in here? The Sons of Trinity Baxter—who I done gave bubblegum to on this very spot right before the Hugo-North boys sprayed all that lead into my black ass—are headin’ out to make their mamma’s Christmas wishes come true. Ain’t it so, More?” Rasheed said, looking straight into Traymore’s eyes from his power chair.
Not having realized until now, that he had been honored with a street name at such a young age, Traymore nodded “Yes,” and stood defiantly.
The old power-chair preacher in the black felt beret gave a studied wink and declared, “I thought you would be the one. You Umari Stackhouse’s son—destined ta lead. “
Broke-Ass Rasheed then looked to Nine and said, “Treat him right, Nine.”
Traymore was in a head spin. He had always been able to figure things out and see them coming. But this, this news that someone knew who his father was—that he had a father, had not been bought at the Baby Mart—struck him like a wind striking a falling candy wrapper. He wanted to ask questions, find out what happened to the man that fathered him, but Broke-Ass Rasheed was lecturing him.
“You young hoppers probably figuring on walkin’ out to Jew Town and rob you a Jew, get you some of that money that Satan done set them up with for managing the enslavement of the Black Man on behalf of the earthly White Devil Incarnate—it’s the curse of Yakub and not a thing can be done about it, ‘cept fight back and subterfugate the situation.
“Let me tell you about Jew Christmas, son, it called Harmony, a candle lit each day for a week to mark each millennium—that’s not a million years, like some dumbass niggas might think, but a thousand—of the Black Man’s bondage, the bondage that done deposited yo soul-starved ass on this abandoned white man stoop. These Jews got so much shit, and is so good at hiding it, working through they Korean front men and sucking up to Whitey, they ration out they Christmas. Sho, they might be an easy mark, but they too sly with they ill-gotten goods to be caught with much by a righteous redistributing brutha like you. So, what I be sayin’ is, though waylayin’ a Hebrew is equivalent to African retribution, it ain’t gonna get you shit. Besides, they got they own Jew Pol-eese—they own desk officer at the precinct, mannin’—or Devillin,’ rather—the Jew Phone! Naw, naw, Little Brutha, Jew Town ain’t fo you, not ‘till you get a car. What you want is to get yo hard-scrappin’ self down the way en get you the first white ‘block buster’ you can. Can you believe that they come callin’ themselves ‘block busters’ when they move their rich asses back into the hood that their granddaddys’ narrow asses vacated? It is an affront, I tell you, a stick in the eye!”
Broke-Ass Rasheed sat, woolly chin jutting, good hand pointing firmly, back down into the hood behind the Mattress Street and the Dice Way, the Flat House Lot and the Ghost Apartments, as if envisioning a great big house full of rich, scared-ass white folks ready to hand over all of they stacks of money and their sweet-ass rides rather then throw down.
There was an ominous and respectful pause of awed silence—most of all by the way-pointing speaker.
“Go there, Young G, bring the Inextinguishable Spirit of Africa into the heart of Whitey’s regurgitude, and get you a White Christmas down in there. They are there, ask your brother here.”
With that, Broke-Ass Rasheed motored off on his quiet wheels in the spitting snow and Traymore looked up accusingly at Nine, who had a haunted look in his eyes. “You didn’t tell me about no polar bears hidin’ out up in here?”
Nine was hesitant, “Look, it’s projects for white retards, okay, white people with fucked up brains. Broke-Ass dere is jus’ pissed he didn’t get one a dose free joints for he own self—still livin’ with his sista—and she a straight-up, giant, scary bitch!”
Traymore knew his place now, new that he was somebody’s son, felt there was a purpose behind his big-ass brain, and looked up coldly into the eyes of Nine—kind of pissed that he had never told him that they had the same father, though this might explain his patronage—who seemed unsteady, not his normal cool-dealing self.
“Nine, how comes you put up with Broke-Ass Rasheed busting yo nuts up here, in your joint?”
Nine answered in a subdued voice, “When I was a little rip-en-runner like you, he treated me right. So I treat him right. I respect him.”
It was time to pounce. Holding out the car keys he announced, “I’ll smoke yo weed for wasting my time, en you can have this car for that spare iron you keep up behind that brick there,” pointing with his chin to where Nine kept his palm gun, the .25 auto.
Nine’s eyes bugged out in surprise, “Nigga, why should I even entertain that shit?”
For answer Traymore, nodded to the now distant form of Broke-Ass Rasheed, making his bitter Broke-Ass way across Park Heights in the snow, subject to the kindness of strangers in cars, and said, “One day, when Broke-Ass Nine wans ta be heard from that wheelie chair he be stuck in, maybe I’ll listen, maybe I’ll treat him right, maybe I’ll respect him.”
Nine looked down into him like he had just seen his own death, shivered, and reached for the loose brick. As keys and gun exchanged hand in the snow-pelted doorway of the Liquor Mart and Milkdud made way for Trayvon and Traysereus, Nine said to him icily, “More, you a evil little muthafucka already, en the only reason I do this is ‘cause we got da same daddy—en you didn’t hear that shit from me. Now get on wit your hard-dealin’ self. Go on, More, go get you mamma her White Christmas!”
More flashed hard eyes up at Nine and then pocketed his first G-iron, a warrior now, before his years, heading out to pop the shit-dealing White World in the eye.
As giddy with confidence as he now felt with a gun in his pocket, as justifiably angry as he felt at Trinity for hiding the fact that his daddy was some big-time badass, and as warm as he felt over discovering that Nine was his for-real-flesh-and-blood-brother, Traymore-no-more, but More, was nervous about the prospect of hunting around behind the Ghost Apartments, the very same place where that dopefiend that Trayserious had head-smashed had crawled, never to be seen again, not even strapped to a po-leese wheelie-bed with a sheet over his dead ass.
But with Trayvon acting the fool, and Trayserious looking leaderless and confused, he was soon out of that care-taking place that remained way in the back of his brain, and stepped back up to the front of life and declared, “We goin’ huntin’ down behind the Ghost Apartments for Broke-Ass Rasheed’s block busters!”
Trayserious nodded silently and clenched his jaw and Trayvon rapped, “Get out da lead, get out da lead!”
The wind shifted, got a bight colder, and drove the ice crystals of some white man’s idea of a nice Christmas into their faces, the hoods over their heads merely managing to funnel the icy, wet mess into their eyes.
To be concluded in The Weird-Ass White-Boy and Down with the James Gang in the second print edition of Winter titled Ire and Ice scheduled for publication on 1/29/16.
