The 'N' Word, Book 1 (35 page)

The same… never changing… never growing. Is that me? Is that really me? When they ask who I am, is that the answer?

The simple words thumped Aaron on the damn head, like a fallen acorn from an oak tree. Something
was
clicking… something was changing. He wasn’t certain what it was, but it had all began with Dr. Owens, and continued with the likes of a black man, who for all intents and purposes appeared scared out of his damn mind… and that man he felt compassion for, yet, he barely knew him…

“I don’t know. I can’t say,” was all Aaron could muster.

“You know what really pisses me off about how my life is right now?”

“What?”

“I knew better, man. I was raised in Mountain Brook.”

“Mountain Brook?”

Aaron leaned a bit closer, his interest definitely piqued. Mountain Brook was a nice place to live, a suburb in Birmingham with sweet appeal. It was a place he’d heard about a time or two as a kid, even driven through as an adult.

“My parents were married. I bet that shocks the shit outta you, too.”

Aaron smirked and nodded in agreement.

“Me and my brother went to a good school and then my mama died and everything went to downhill. We moved here to be close to my grandmother ’cause my father couldn’t raise us on his own. I guess I felt a bit outta place.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I got with a group of guys that I shouldn’t have. I knew I was on the wrong path, but I just…shit, peer pressure is somethin’ and I wanted to fit in, belong. I was tired of not fittin’ in and I thought
this
time would be different.”

“Why’s that?”

“’Cause when I was livin’ in Mountain Brook, the white kids used to fuck wit’ me there, say racist stuff, laugh, things like that. Me and my brother were two of the few black kids there at the time, man… It was hard.”

Aaron slowly looked away and swallowed, feeling something… feeling something deep within.

“I had to work twice as hard to just prove that I had half of what they did. But, you know what?” A tender smile creased his face. “I don’t regret it. I don’t, not at all, because it made me stronger. It made me able to take a lot of shit, you know? But I was young… just a kid.”

Aaron played the man’s words over and over in his mind, feeling the prickly pain and tumultuous truth of it all. Marcus’ pain overlapped his own until they became one big ball, a tangled mess together. He could not see where his began and Marcus’ ended, but it all felt the same, the same… the same…

“This is wild…”

“What’s wild?” The man looked at him, the whites of his eyes a bit glassy and pink as if he’d been rubbing them pretty hard.

“Just the irony, is all.” Aaron shrugged. “It’s just… almost satirical. Shit like this never happens by mistake. Tell me something?”

“Yeah?”

“How did someone like you end up in here? I mean, you told me the charges, but what really went down? You seem too smart to get caught up. I’m just curious is all.”

“Ha, messed up story…” He slowly turned away, looked down at the dirt-covered ground, and flicked a few more ashes. “My friend said he was goin’ to get his shit from his ex-girlfriend, right? Said she agreed to let him finally come get it from her crib but I knew he was lyin’. That shit wasn’t his to begin wit’. He wanted a ride over there. I was just a getaway driver so to speak and I had a truck, something to haul stuff away in. He’d clown me for being faithful to my wife, not runnin’ round here fuckin’ with these chicken heads ’nd shit. I have a beautiful wife,” he said with a sigh. “Why would I wanna mess that up by messin’ wit’ some of these hoes? Anyway, I ignored all of that, but he started putting ideas in my head a long time before this, things to do with money. I needed some; he had connections. He was gettin’ me greased up and thirsty, so to speak.”

“Butterin’ you up for the kill?”

“Yeah.” Marcus flicked a tiny flying bug away from his arm. “Told me my job at the factory, I.T. managerial and all, wasn’t going to mean shit unless I tried to get some
real
cash. So, we get over there and I tell him straight out I know what’s up, right? I didn’t want him to think he was dealing with a dummy. So he said he’d give me a third of whatever money he made after he sold what he got from her house. He had some sugar mama, man. She was payin’ for all of his clothes, his bills, his car note, everything when they were together. She was this older white lady, had a lot of money, liked his looks. But then,” he said with a grimace, his tone started to drag, “he messed up. She was the jealous type and was tired of him cheatin’. She kicked him out. Anyway… I knew whatever he got outta there, it would be worth a lot. I needed that money, man. I needed it bad.” He glanced up at the sky for a brief spell, his expression taking on a somber mien. “My father is sick,
real
sick. Got medical bills, and my wife and I wanted to put our daughter in a private school. I figured it would be easy and over with, and now… now I ain’t got shit…done lost every damn thang, and fuh what?”

“Hmmm.” Aaron swallowed and crossed his ankles as he took notice of an assemblage of rain clouds huddling together, causing the sky to deepen into a darker shade of gray. “Seems like you made a bad decision out of desperation.” Aaron took another inhale of his cigarette then looked lazily in the man’s direction. “I guess you already know why I’m in here.”

“Yeah, man…
everybody
know.” The guy looked him in the eye. “It sure ain’t no mystery.” He grinned, but Aaron could see a part of Marcus hated him… hated him merely for what he represented, claimed, and had become. “Later on I’ll get a bunch of questions as to why I was even sittin’ here in the first damn place. You different than I thought you’d be though… Yeah, you different.” The man scanned him slowly up and down.

“You’re different too, Marcus.”

“What did you expect?” The man laughed lightly, reached around, and smashed his cigarette butt in the ashtray, making the butt crinkle down to a mere nub like a tiny, white accordion.

“I thought you’d be… I don’t know what I thought you’d be… just not like this.”

“You looked a little pissed when I started asking you questions. Didn’t expect that, but I didn’t expect you to know the answers, either. I guess we both thought somethin’ different, huh?”

“The quiz…yeah.” Aaron scratched his scalp. “I knew what was up as soon as you gave me that quiz though.”

“Oh.” Marcus leaned back, obviously more comfortable now, too. “You knew what was up, huh?” He smirked, amusement in his tone.

“Yeah. The black nationalists and Hebrew Israelites around here know all of that stuff, so I figured I’d chosen the wrong guy to talk with, accidentally run into one once you got to yappin’.”

“Accidentally ran into one?”

“Yeah. I’d been standing here trying to figure out which one of you I was going to ask to talk to me, to make my ol’ lady happy.” Aaron smiled from ear to ear, getting a kick out of how that sounded.

Yeah, my woman… she did this shit to me… but it ain’t so bad…

“I figured I’d pick someone who fit what I thought most of you all were, get it done and over with, prove my case, but I was avoiding the black pride activists – already dealt with them.”

“Hmmph.” Marcus shook his head. “Why’d you pick me, then?” He looked up and down real suspicious like. “I don’t look like what you described, or at least I don’t think I do.”

“You don’t.” Aaron shrugged. “I think I felt like you’d at least talk to me though; you didn’t appear unapproachable is what I’m saying. Also, I didn’t know you. I didn’t want my reputation to sway you… had hopes you didn’t know much about me either but it turned into something else… This
entire
conversation has turned into something else.”

But I’ve already been thinking about this shit, haven’t I? About my beliefs, what I’ve stood for thus far. It’s all been hanging on the line, begging me to look it in the eye and figure it out…

“I’d have to agree with you there.”

“It’s uh… as strange as it sounds, it’s hard to put a face with the beliefs… easy to separate the two.” He pressed his fingertips into his ribcage, feeling himself as his damn heartbeat seemed to pause for just a moment. Releasing a choked breath, he continued. “Not think of you all as having similar issues or analogous ideologies, at least on some levels. You and I aren’t the same… but… I have to ask myself questions now, things I had answers for before. But those answers don’t always work anymore.”

“That’s because you spend most of your time focusing on differences, instead of everything that brings us together, man.” The man slapped his thigh angrily as he gritted his teeth, his eyes turning impossibly darker. “That’s a lot of wasted time if ya ask
me
! Who got time fuh that shit, man? I sho’ don’t. Not all of us are out here raidin’ and lootin’ and actin’ a fool! I messed up, okay?” He pointed to himself. “I made a mistake. Who hasn’t? But I ain’t no damn thug and you can
bet
I won’t be coming back here. White people ain’t perfect; not all of y’all are upstandin’ human beings and guys like you act like ere’thang y’all do is kosher, true blue, and ere’thang we do is uh bunch of bullshit. Tha shit ain’t fair; somebody not countin’ these chickens right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you what I mean. I’m four times as likely to get pulled over by the police than you. You know why? ’Cause I’m a black man, man! If you did the same crime I did, I bet you wouldn’t have even gotten sentenced or it woulda been a slap on the damn wrist.”

Aaron simply listened, fought his programmed urge to come back with facts and figures, percentages and examples… No, he simply heeded the words being shared, took them in, tried to decipher them in a new way. The task proved daunting, but something inside him forced him to do it, take a step forward, and then another.

“Why waste yo’ time on tryna find ways to get rid of somebody and focusin’ on all that you hate about us, and Jews, and Hispanics and everybody else that ain’t white, when you could be lookin’ for feasible solutions? We ain’t goin’ nowhere, and neither are you. A race war won’t do nothin’ but leave everyone dead, so then
what
?!”

The way he said that… the way he said that just now… Well, shit… that meant something…

“A lot of this shit out here is just a bunch of bull,” the man continued as he stared down at his filthy sneakers.

“It is… It really is, Marcus. I think the time when stuff like this first starts – certain ideas, you know – is while we’re young and it takes something to bring it out, make it explode. I think so many things start early in life, but we don’t find out about this until much later.”

“Yeah, that’s true. In my house, we was taught you keep yo’ family business to yourself. So, kids walk around bein’ angry and confused, with no one to talk to. If anything, that’s the time we should be encouraged to talk the most.”

“That’s an interesting perspective.”

“You probably listened to music that put crazy thoughts in your head as a kid, just like I did.”

I did…

“Children are impressionable…
we
were impressionable. Whatever happened to us waaaaay back then, some of that shit stuck to us, just like glue. Man, if you mess up a kid, don’t raise ’em right, hell, even if you do raise ’em up right, so much can go wrong. I try to do right by my daughter, but now…” He shrugged, obviously disappointed in himself. “Her father is in prison. It don’t too much matter what I say; my actions will always be louder than my words.”

Aaron sat there, thinking, taking the words in. Marcus definitely had a way about him, reminding him of somebody he knew… or did he know himself at all?

If he were white, we’d actually probably get along real well… might even be friends…

“What have you heard about me, Marcus?”

The man slowly looked up at him and their eyes locked.

“I’ve heard you the wrong mothafucka to piss off. Dat’s what I heard.”

Aaron let out a ragged breath as he took a glance at the guards standing in the not too far distance with guns in plain view.

“Matter of fact, when you first called me over, I’ll admit, I was a little scared, man. I didn’t know what you had planned, what you wanted. I knew I had to protect myself though… but I was surprised when you said you just wanted to talk. I didn’t believe you. But so far, that’s all that’s happened… that’s
really
all that’s happened.”

“As I sat here beside you, I kept starin’ at you, Marcus, ’cause you even have a few mannerisms that are similar to mine.”

“Like what?”

“Well, the way you look people in the eye, the way you smile sometimes even when you’re mad. I kept looking at you, and tryna understand who you reminded me of. Maybe…maybe I picked you because of that very reason.”

“Marcus, the black Aaron?”

They both looked at one another and burst out laughing. After a few moments, they simmered down, refocused.

“How long you been like this, man? Serious talk,” Marcus asked.

“Been like what?”

“Hating people that ain’t like you… different races.”

Aaron looked around the place, his eyes resting on Danny for a mere moment before traveling back to Marcus. “A long time. A pretty long damn time.”

“You got a lot of clout. Even those guys over there yonder.” He pointed to the crowd of white men. “They bowed and hung their head when you came out, like you God or somethin’. I been hearing people talking about you… you got this prison scared as hell. They say you smart, cunning and crazy.”

“I’m all of that.”

“Do you like bein’ like this? I mean, probably so, right? It makes you feel important, superior.” The man sneered at him, his hand fisted in his pants pockets, as if he might want to go to war. Emotions seemed to overwhelm him, reminding him who he was sitting next to.

Aaron exhaled. “I thought I did, Marcus. I don’t right now…I just, I just don’t know.” They were quiet for a minute or two. “Look, you uh, you put something on my mind. I need to think about this, work it through. As for you,” he said, pointing at him. “You are gonna be alright, you hear me? This meant a lot. You took a chance, did something you ain’t wanna do, with someone you ain’t wanna do it with. When people do me right, I do them right,
too
…”