Rage Is Back (9781101606179) (30 page)

That turned out to be a template for the next five hours of my night. I told myself I was a sentry, crisscrossing the yard on high alert, but really I was that dude at a party darting his eyes at the next conversational cluster, convinced he could be having a better time. I flitted and roamed, useless as a teacher patrolling the rows of a study hall humming with productivity. Every half hour or so, it would hit me anew that this thing was actually happening, and I'd have these heart-surges of elation and want to find Dengue or Karen and try to put it into words, get it corroborated. But Karen was with Billy, and I wasn't going anywhere near that fucking car. Speaking might have jinxed it anyway; those bursts of giddiness disrupted a foreboding thick enough to choke on.

I looked at my watch incessantly, and at the sky. Somehow, daylight seemed to promise safety—writers were nocturnal creatures, after all, and the Vandal Squad knew that—or at least an infusion of energy. Spraycan sounds and snatches of shoptalk still floated over the tops of trains as I museum-strolled the predawn aisles, but dudes were flagging, slowing down. By the time sunrise finally rolled around, not even the horizon's deep pinks could scrub the pallor from everybody's grill, and I was adding stamina to my laundry list of worries. All at once, an overwhelming fatigue hit me. I climbed into a train car, threw my feet up on a seat, shut my eyes and tried to rub away the ache with a thumb and forefinger.

Then a cheer went up, somewhere close by.

“Breakfast is served, ninjas.”

I jumped down and followed the sound to the next row. There stood Supreme Chemistry, his mask and war paint gone. In one hand, he carried a cardboard box of coffee, the plastic-nozzle kind that serves twenty. In the other, a stack of cups. Karen and several dudes I'd never seen before stood before him, spraycans abandoned by their feet, clamoring for refreshment.

Dengue lumbered into view behind 'Preme, and sniffed elaborately at the air. “Do I smell what I think I smell? Why, can it be . . . is it really . . . Supreme motherfucking Chemistry?” I used the laughter as cover and sidled up to Karen, just as she reached the front of the line.

“Hey. Hook me up.” I handed her my empty cup. She traded me her full one, and I cream-and-sugared it.

“You get any rest?”

“Hell no.” I stifled a yawn. “You been with Billy all night?”

“On and off. There's a dude here from Boston who works in a hospital, and another from Mexico who's an EMT or something. We've been taking turns.”

“Has Billy had a break?”

“He left for a half hour, tried to sleep but couldn't. Did a piece instead. The guards are ‘much deeper inside the experience'”—she slashed quotation marks around the phrase—“so it's calmed down some. But your father says that's deceptive.”

She turned to Supreme Chemistry. “So where in the fuck you been, son? Your boy Klutch dropped off his guard at one. Said they left you in front of the other dude's house around eleven, and hadn't heard a word since.”

All the writers within earshot put their conversations on pause, wanting to hear the answer. Supreme Chemistry blew out his cheeks, wiped imaginary sweat from his brow with the inside of a wrist.

“Y'all kids tucked in? 'Cause heeeeere we go.”

The Slick Rick reference was lost on no one. A couple of guys sat down on the ground at 'Preme's feet, literalizing his view of the world. The rest of us spread our legs a little wider, and sipped our steaming drinks.

“So. This ninja's name is Dudley Yarborough, and the address we have for him is a row house up in my old neighborhood, few blocks from my PJs. I tell Zebno creep past. We see the lights on, folks is home, so boom, I tell M.A.G. drop me off, I got this. I leave the mask in the ride, scrub off the paint. I'm figuring I'll play the block on some incognegro shit until the ninja comes out, which should be any minute now if he's gonna make it to Queens before his shift starts. He's gotta be driving, or he woulda
been
gone.

“So I jump out, and they break north to go handle theirs. I post up underneath this ninja's window. Which is open. The ninja's inside arguing with his old lady. Sounds like both of them have been drinking. I can hear every word. It's one of those arguments you can listen to and still not know what the fuck it's about, because it didn't start tonight, it started like fifteen or twenty years ago, you dig?

“After a while, Yarborough says something like ‘Enough of your shit, woman, I gotta go make the money that keeps this goddamn roof over your head,' and he slams the door and comes on out. I'm by the curb, thinking I'll follow the ninja to his car and take advantage of the split second of concentration it takes him to insert a key into his door. From the sound of his voice, Yarborough is pushing up on sixty, and nobody that old got a whip with keyless entry, you feel me? Old men drive old-man cars.

“He comes out, and my fuckin' heart falls out of my chest and starts rolling away down the alley. It's Coupe DeVille. I'd know the ninja anywhere. He was president of the Vicious Knives when I was a kid. Y'all too young to remember the gang days, except maybe you Fever, but them times was
mean
. Sixties into the early seventies, boy. You couldn't go nowhere in the Boogie Down unless the ninjas that controlled that neighborhood let you pass.”

“Right,” said Dengue.

“You got to a certain age, you couldn't even walk in your
own
neighborhood unless you was affiliated—never mind going someplace else. You walked into another territory, you were supposed to have permission, and take your colors off to show respect. Otherwise, they'd take 'em off your back and whip that ass, maybe bring out some chains or some bats. And every few blocks, it was a different gang. The shit was real structured, B. Every gang had a president, a VP, and a warlord. Plus, they had junior divisions, for the kids too young to join the main one—like, the Vicious Knives had the Young Knives, the Baby Knives, and the Lady Knives, for the girlfriends. The shit was crazy.

“So anyway, Coupe DeVille was the
man
. He was a hustler, a car thief, always smooth, always looked good, always had girls around him, had this butterfly knife he was always flipping around in his hand. He founded the Vicious Knives, and every little kid in the PJs wanted to be him. The Knives did a lot of good, too; they weren't just thugs. We cared about our neighborhoods back then. Tried to keep things clean. You sold heroin, they'd throw you off a rooftop, you know what I mean?

“Me, I was in the Young Knives. My job was to write the name all over the neighborhood, mark the territory. This is even before graff jumped off, B. I'm talkin' 'bout, they gave me a bucket and a brush, and told me to write that shit on all the abandoned buildings and make sure I spelled it right. This is '67, '68, when I'm like eleven, twelve. I don't even count those years on my graffiti résumé, 'cause it wasn't that. It was gang shit.

“First, though, I had to get jumped in by the older guys. What they did was take you into the clubhouse, which was an abandoned building, and they put on a forty-five and took turns beating your ass. And if you stayed on your feet until the record was over, you were in.”

“What was the record?” I asked.

“It was a James Brown record. ‘Cold Sweat.' And that's a long motherfucker, too, believe me. I'll never forget, I'm getting my ass kicked, but I'm handling it. I'm protecting my face, I'm hitting back when I can. The song ends, and Coupe DeVille waits about two seconds, then punches me dead in the mouth, knocks out two teeth. Just to show everybody he could do whatever he wanted.

“Nowadays, he's an old, broken-down man. But still, I couldn't yoke this ninja up. I couldn't lay him out. It'd be like laying out my father. Laying out God. I'm watching him come toward me, and I decide, you know what, fuck it, I'm going to show the proper respect. The ninja's drunk, he just finished squabbling with his wife, he doesn't wanna go to work. So let me do the right thing here. And I just walk straight up to him and say ‘Coupe DeVille. You wouldn't remember me, but I was a Junior Knife back in the day, and you were my hero. I'd know you anywhere, even all these years later. Come on, man, lemme buy you a drink on a Friday night.'

“He looks at me with those drunk-man eyeballs, and says ‘I gotta go to work.'

“And I say, ‘Listen, brother, I'm going to level with you. There's something jumping off tonight at that trainyard in Corona that you want to stay as far away from as possible. All you gotta tell them when they ask is that you got a phone call saying your shift's been canceled, and you won't get in any trouble. You dig? I know you dig, shit, you're Coupe DeVille. Now come on, drinks on me.'

“I took him to this titty bar a little ways Uptown. Real skanky place. He loved it, boy. Who knows how long since he'd had a night? I'm ordering round after round of Hennessy, and he's living it up, talking all kinds of shit to these off-brand dancers. Then he starts in with the back-in-the-day stories, bringing up all kinds of names I haven't heard in thirty-some-odd years. Fights, parties—his mind is crystal clear. We're having a ball.”

Supreme Chemistry massaged his eyes, as if just realizing what a toll the night had taken. “Me and DeVille kept drinking until the club shut down,” he said, “then I took him home in a cab, and hit up Dunkin' Donuts for you ninjas. And here I am. Ready to paint. Oh, yeah, almost forgot. Boom.” From his shoulder bag, Supreme Chemistry produced three sizable sacks of baked goods. Then, true to his word, he wandered off to put in work.

The writers scattered a few minutes later, high on sugar and caffeine, ready to burn. Dengue and I repaired to his command center and made doughnuts disappear. The occasional progress report trickled in, via walkie-talkie. All was well in the train yards of New York City, now host to a global graffiti reunion, an Amuse burner contest, and the steady forward march of the greatest achievement in the artform's history. The impending shift-change would be without calamity; every guard scheduled to work dozed blissfully in his bed. Closer to home, their psychotropically subdued colleagues explored new vistas of discovery, or at least plunged through the terrors of their inner worlds in relative quiet.

“This is ridiculous,” I told Dengue.

“I know.”

“I keep waiting for—”

“I know.” He groped for the waxpaper bag. “Anything good left?”

“Not really.” I poked around. “Half a blueberry crunch?”

“Sold.” I handed it over. We listened to the hum of the yard for a while, and then I had my best idea ever.

“We should buy one of those little hibachi joints, do some burgers and dogs. Show folks a little hospitality. What do you think?”

“I'm embarrassed I didn't come up with it first.”

We fired up the grill at noon, and kept it blazing through the night. Different cats hoofed to the nearest supermarket, which was none too close, whenever we needed to resupply. For lunch, we rocked everything from kielbasa to veggie links. Then Trash copped skewers of marinated shrimp and tuna (the euro, apparently, is kicking the dollar's ass), and took the whole thing to another level. In retaliation, Enrique from Matamos Todos disappeared for two hours, located a Mexican carnicería, and returned with some type of spice-rubbed pork good enough to call Judaism and Islam into profound question.

Cats ate and drank and painted. They pulled out cameras, called in friends. Our numbers multiplied.
Clicka-clacka, psshht
. By midnight every car was painted, and motherfuckers had invoked The Rules and started going over yesterday's rushed throw-ups with fresh burners. I museum-strolled the aisles, turning my head left and right, AMUSE AMUSE AMUSE AMUSE AMUSE in every hand and style and color scheme. Jutting, monochromatic pieces so convincingly three-dimensional they might have been laser-hewn granite sculptures ran next to classic battle-ready wildstyles, arrows licking out like tongues of flame or hooking inward to suggest a power so unstable that the piece might self-destruct. Playful, soft-edged letters leaned together like off-kilter drunks, floating atop pastel puddles of melted Popsicle. Classic b-boy characters speckled the trains, shelltoed and Cazaled, tracksuited and Kangoled: tour guides directing your attention with jutting forefingers or cocked thumbs. There were throwback pieces, shouting out the early days by way of primitive patterned fills, flat regimented fields of stars, spindly-legged letters clumsy as baby giraffes. Some random cat from Far Rockaway even recreated Amuse's most famous joint stroke-for-stroke, a Duchampian collage of silver-turquoise-scarlet panes and shards that looked like a stained glass window the instant after a wrecking ball hit it.

At three
A.M
., the motioning began. Every twenty minutes, a train parked just past the end of the line so the conductors could walk through and pick up garbage, and we had eight to make sure it pulled out fully bombed. Dengue was right; the Danes were masters of that shit. Every one of them was ambidextrous, with a wingspan like a hawk, and they knocked out pieces like fucking snow angels; all you'd see was a body plastered against the train, a series of furious gyrations, and then the dude would walk away and bam, there'd be a burner in his wake.

At five, the yard would begin to empty of trains in anticipation of the morning commute, so three o'clock was also the welding hour. Any earlier, and we'd have been wasting too much of the tape players' batteries. I demoted myself to assistant, and did Supreme Chem's prep work: opened the booth, set up the tape, made sure the mic and the PA were on, then stepped back and watched the sparks fly.

Billy's message was short and to the point, repeated six times so as to fill both sides of a five-minute cassette. Writing credits went to Fizz, who'd also coached Billy on delivery, and made him record so many takes that his voice had a slight robotic quality. The careful listener—the one who had to hear the tape all the way from Brooklyn to the Bronx, for instance—might discern a faint cry of “I got crack for sale” a minute and twenty-nine seconds into side two, courtesy of Rockwell, who'd been wandering Vexer's block during what had otherwise been Billy's sharpest take.