How It Went Down (4 page)

“What?” I rub my face sleepily, sip my orange juice. These late nights out are killing me. Maybe I should start tagging in the afternoon. It just seems so much less … gangster.

“A man shot a gang kid downtown last night,” Steve says. “Now it turns out he might not have been a gang member at all. The guy claims self-defense, but the kid wasn’t even armed, they think now. Big controversy.” His eyes remain glued to the set, probably reading the scroll bar. The volume is set real low.

The kitchen TV is mounted on the wall above the fridge. Steve loves TV. He has six of them in his house, in just about every room, including his bathroom. Mom says,
Stop calling it his house. It’s our house, too.
We’ve been here three years. Still doesn’t feel like home.

“Peach Street,” Steve says. “You know it?”

I wrinkle my nose at him. Everyone from Underhill knows Peach Street.
Steve
should freaking know Peach Street. Mom and I lived right off it, before we moved to his place across town. But I don’t think Steve ever came to our apartment. Not one time in the whole year that they dated. He’s a total ghettophobe.

“Yeah, I know it.” In fact, that explains the police tape fluttering up and down the block between Simpson and Roosevelt. I saw it last night when I was down there tagging, but I can’t tell that to Steve. He’d have my ass. So would Mom.

Steve pumps the volume up a notch. “
… wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and a red bandanna, easily mistaken for a gang member…”
chirps the reporter on TV.

Mistaken? That’s bull. No one walks down Peach Street wearing red bandanna by accident.

STEVE CONNERS

These damn kids. They never learn. As a black man, you have to keep your head down. You have to keep yourself steady. You have to follow every rule that’s ever been written, plus a few that have always remained unspoken.

How hard is that to understand? Like I always tell my stepson, Will: If you dress like a hood, you will get treated like a hood. If you want to get treated like a man, you have to dress like a man. Simple as that.

It’s how this world works.

It stops being about the color of your skin after a while, and starts being about how you comport yourself. Inside, too, but mostly out. If you want to wear your pants down around your knees, with some big old chain dragging them down, a do-rag in your pocket, fine. But you have to understand how it looks. You have to know how people are going to react. Those outfits are associated with an undesirable, often dangerous element of society. Everyone knows that.

I wear a three-piece suit to work every day. That’s every single day for the last twenty years, from my first internship out of college all the way up through the ranks to Vice President of Sales. On the weekends, I favor a sport coat. Everything is tailored, nice. I make a point of looking good. Would I be more comfortable in baggy jeans and a basketball jersey? Of course I would. My favorite shirt is the Michael Jordan #23 Bulls jersey I have hanging in the closet. Twenty-some years old, and it’s still in good shape. Mint condition, really. I’ve never worn it out of the house. I’m a professional. How would that look?

TYRELL

I can’t even go to school, once I know. The way it works is, T always comes by in the morning around 7:20 because my place is on his way. He rings my buzzer twice in a rhythm, like
zing … ZING
, so I know it’s him and I come down.

If he’s sick or whatever, he’ll call, so I know to go on ahead, but usually then I just skip. I don’t like to walk to school alone. It’s only ten blocks, but eight of them beeline through the heart of Stinger territory. Sometimes those guys try to lay a sales pitch on you, just like the Kings.
Why you walking all alone, homes? Get yourself a yellow jacket; you ain’t never gotta be alone.
They crowd around me, flashing signs and breathing close.

I shiver. T hasn’t called. It’s five after eight and there’s still no sign. My screen is black and the air is silent.

My books are all packed up in my backpack, ready to go, and I wait for the buzzer. My mind hums this kind of static, and I just know the buzz is gonna come.
Zing … ZING
.

I’ll go running down the stairs. Fling open the door. “You asshole,” I’ll say. “You freaking punk.”

Tariq will be standing there, grinning, one fist on the door jamb and the other on his hip. “Yo, Ty,” he’ll say. “I had you going for a minute.”

EDWIN “ROCKY” FRY

The cops keep coming around. They want to say Tariq robbed me. I can only tell them he didn’t.

“But he had a gun with him?” they ask.

“I didn’t see one,” is my answer. “I mind my own business.”

“Did you feel threatened at any time?”

“He paid his bill, all right? Please. I know his family. Tariq wouldn’t pull a stunt like that on me.” This is the same boy who always picks up a Snickers bar for his little sister. Girl’s a little slow, I guess, but Tariq takes good care of her. Says
please
and
thank you
, too, not like those gang boys who were out there razzing him. I never see any of them in here, buying milk for their mamas. It’s always beer, cigarettes, and Slim Jims.

“So you didn’t feel threatened?”

“From Tariq? Never once.”

They leave, again and again, unsatisfied.

Now the news people are at it, too. Calling Tariq an “armed robbery suspect.” I don’t know where they get these tales. I’ve never said a thing against him. Not a single thing to make it sound like that rumor could be true. Who knows where they’re getting it.

I used to read the paper in the mornings. Used to take in every word. Now I don’t know what to believe.

SAMMY

“They caught the fucker, and they just let him go,” Brick says, about as heated as I’ve ever seen him.

“What’d you expect?” Noodle mutters, from the front passenger seat. We’re riding in Brick’s car. Radio on, to the local hip hop station.

The volume is already cranked, but Noodle cranks it higher. It’s a brief news segment; they’re talking about Tariq. “
… member of the 8-5 Kings, shot to death in Underhill yesterday. Yo, Kings: rest easy, fellows—for once, we can report it wasn’t a turf war. Cops arrested and released the alleged shooter, after he lodged a claim of self-defense. That’s right, he’s back on the street, ladies and gentlemen. Our best advice: leave your do-rags at home today…”

The radio report is confusing—cops say Tariq had on a red bandanna, but T wasn’t sporting no colors yesterday. He was in a black hoodie. Everybody’s got one of those. His T-shirt wasn’t red or nothing, either.

When the heavy, thumping music comes back, Noodle and Brick resume their argument about the gun. “You were across the street,” Brick says. “How could you even see?”

“He didn’t have no gun,” Noodle protests. “Punk like Tariq? Hell, no.”

“I was a foot from him,” Brick insists. “You calling me a liar?”

“Ask Jennica. She told it to the cops. You know she wouldn’t lie.”

Brick looks in the rearview. “Sammy, settle it.”

Noodle turns over his shoulder to glare at me. I swallow hard. There’s no way to win this.

“I’m not sure,” I answer. “All I saw was Jack Franklin.”

Brick’s never offered to pick me up before. I don’t have that kinda clout in the organization. But since I was there last night, and the shooting’s all he wants to talk about, he rolled by for me. I don’t want anything good to come from T dying. But I can’t turn my back on this kinda opportunity.

REDEEMA

“You start running with a gang, I’ll kill you with my own hands,” I said. Them’s the last words I ever spoke on his little brown ears. He had that do-rag in his back pocket. Red, with them gourd shapes spread across it in black.

I said it like a joke though, and he knew it, too, ’cause he was smiling. Waved his buns at me like he hot stuff.

“Woo,” I said. “Boy, you quit dancing and get back to dusting.”

So, I s’pose them’s the last words, really.

His momma called him up from the kitchen right then. Tariq flashed them little white teeth at me, then go off on her bidding.

Lord, I ain’t wanna think about it no more.

That boy be smart. How he gonna leave the house with that do-rag still on him?

Shoulda thrown them all away, come the moment. But we ain’t wanna put good cloth to waste. When it got real severe with the colors and the gangs around the neighborhood, we put all them things straight in the rag bin. Gathered ’em all right up, never to leave the house again. I been around a long time. I know how it goes.

I’s the one what set him to dusting. A boy’s gotta learn to do the small things round the house. I ain’t know Vernie was gonna up and send him out. How’s I gonna know?

Lord, I ain’t wanna think about it no more. I seen how it is, in the aftermath. How everyone be looking for the piece of the thing that they woulda done different. I always hold myself above such mess. Ain’t no use in wishful thinking. All that brain wringing don’t come to no good. But all I’m thinking now … please stop me, Lord! All I’m thinking is how I’s the one that set him to dusting.

I can’t see nothing wrong with it, either. House needed dusting. Boy was there. Been home all afternoon, just loafing and goofing, not a care in the world. You give a boy like that a chore. That’s what you do. Every time.

Lord, have mercy.

I been around a long time. I lost a lot of people I love. Can’t stop myself loving, can’t stop myself losing ’em. My own ma and pops, years back. Older brother, younger sister. Handful of nephews, that sort of thing. My big son, sick with the throat cancer.

It’s a long time I been loving folk. Long time, I been losing em. But I ain’t ever known a sorrow like this one.

BRICK

Damn right, Tariq was wearing red and black. Like any good King. Straight up.

It’s about time, too. I’ve been ragging on him for two years. He was gonna be my lieutenant when the time was right. We both knew it. And time was coming due.

We knew it since we was little, way back when I became lieutenant to Sciss. We knew it was gonna be handed to me one day, and then to Tariq. We used to stand out back of the church, or over in the playground, and talk shit about Sciss and how much better and stronger the Kings would be when we was in charge. Straight up.

But you can’t walk into the job fresh off. You got to choose the life, and then you got to rise the ranks. I gave Tariq the same advice Sciss once gave me: Don’t come till you’re ready, and then come all in. T was ready. He proved that last night on the sidewalk. He was ready.

TYRELL

No, no, no, no
, is all I come up thinking. Hell no. Tariq wasn’t in the Kings.

They wanted him, of course. The 8-5s wanted him bad, but Tariq knew how to lay them off.

Brick would come around, pressing it, and Tariq would get into it with him. All the time. He was the only one of us I knew who could stand up to Brick and his guys like that.

The Kings are in everything. It’s real hard to get out of the neighborhood without their stink on you. But it’s what I want to do. And I got lucky, because that’s what Tariq wanted too. So we were in it together. Well, out of it together, I mean.

I don’t know why anyone would think that Tariq was a King. I’ve seen him push it off a hundred times. When Brick and his guys come around—around the few of us who aren’t already in, I mean—you have to act just right. You have to play it cool. They want to lean on you, make it sound real good to be up in something where a bunch of tough guys always have your back. They remind you how rough the neighborhood can get, and they promise to protect you. They’ll teach you to fight, so you don’t have to walk afraid—of the Stingers, of the cops, of the random crazies who go around making trouble. They promise you cash, and spin it so good you get stars in your eyes.

Even when you know it’s dead-end wrong, it all sounds so right and so safe. You got to learn to blow them off without pissing them off, and Tariq had the magic touch.

I got real lucky. Tariq made it so I could keep my head down and just do my thing. Brick knew to lay off me, too, or Tariq would be in his face.

But Tariq’s gone now.

REVEREND ALABASTER SLOAN

The plane hasn’t even taken off before I flag down the flight attendant, ask for something to drink. She brings me a large scotch and soda, on the house. Celebrity has its perks.

I’m not afraid to fly, nor to enter a strange media hoopla. No rule says I have to weigh in on the Tariq Johnson story; I brought this on myself. It’s going to make national news, soon enough, and I want to be there when it does.

Yet my stomach is in knots. I can’t even find a way to pray about it, because I can’t stop thinking: I wished for this.

I was thinking just the other day that my campaign’s been lagging. I needed some magic potion, some pick-me-up to bring me back into the spotlight. An issue to tout, a side to stand on, a moral high ground to stomp with my righteous foot. Ask and ye shall be granted, God says. What have I done, Lord? This time.

Tariq Johnson is dead, and I wished for it. Not for his death, specifically, but for something a whole lot like it. I have sinned.

I believe that I have been chosen. Tapped by the hand of God to bring my particular skills to bear on the issues facing blacks in America. I believe in God, that He works in mysterious ways … but this, this is too much.

The first class seat cushion absorbs my weight as the plane takes off, bound for the small city that will soon be in the spotlight. I shut my eyes, try not think it: I wished for this.

JENNICA

I put on my waitress uniform, the short tight cream-colored dress and the ironed brown apron. I have to really suck it in to get it buttoned these days. I went for one a size too small. Better tips, I’ve learned, if the fabric hugs your hips and your cleavage crests between the buttons. It makes sense, I think, when I look at myself in the mirror.