Capital City

  I’m shaking my head and smiling with the rest of the passengers on the bus. This motherfucker’s crazy!

  “What, ‘chu gon’ shoot me, nigga? Why, ’cause I’m in ya damn turf? Well, fuck ya gotdamn turf!”

  He gets up and sits back down. “Fuck it. Fuck it! That’s why the white man got all you niggas now. Even in Africa niggas was fightin’ ova some gotdamn turf! That’s why the white man got’cha. Fuck ya gotdamn turf!”

  He gets up and gets off at New Hampshire Avenue.

  This black woman with a Jheri-curl giggles from my left. “It’s some crazy people out here.”

  I smile. But that motherfucker was talking some real-ass facts! He was right! We are fighting over turf—that and respect. But all humans fight over turf and respect. That shit ain’t nothing new. Bamma-ass nigga. Fuck him! He just mad because he don’t have nothing to fight over.

  I get off the bus further up Georgia Avenue and walk around to where these niggas are.

  “Yo, Shank, we got a sale already,” Otis says. He’s been on my dils-nick lately. I guess he’s trying to stay cool with me. But you can’t really trust a nigga too much after you beat his ass.

  “Yeah, so how many ounces did Butterman leave y’all?” I ask him.

  “We got seven,” Rudy answers.

  I take my regular seat up on the top step. This middleaged woman comes out from the apartments behind me. I move to let her by. But she stops out in front of me.

  “Is there any reason why you all have to stand in front of my home with this shit every day?”

  “I’m waiting for a ride to come pick me up,” Steve tells her.

  I nod for Otis and Rudy to follow me around back.

  Steve handles most of the deals anyway.

  “She ain’t say nothin’ to us any other time we was out here,” Otis says, once we get around in the driveway.

  I look up to her back window and see the shades move. I shake my head. “I can see this bitch is ’bout ta ’cause us problems.” Damn, I shouldn’t call her a bitch. I mean, she got a right to tell us to move away from her property. But this shit is public property anyway. The city or some white ma’fucka prob’ly own this whole block. Damn! That crazy-ass man on the bus was right. We don’t even have no turf, for real.

  “We need ta get a new spot anyway,” Rudy says.

  “Where at, ’cause most of the area is used up already. We got niggas on, like, e’ry hot-ass block around here,” Otis says.

  Rudy looks to me. “Fuck it then, we’ll jus’ kill a few ma’fuckas and take their shit over.”

  Otis giggles. “You betta stop watchin’ that New Jack City shit, you’n. This ain’t no movie.”

  “Naw, but for real. We supplyin’ most of this area anyway. So we jus’ tell niggas they buy from us or else.”

  Hmm. Sounds like Rudy gettin’ a bit too ambitious. I might have ta watch his ass.

  Steve comes jogging around back. A gray 280 ZX follows him. I choke up on my wooden-handled .45. Rudy pulls out the ounce. Steve and Otis watch both corners.

  “Aw’ight, but we might be movin’ soon, so keep that beeper number,” Rudy says. He pockets the money. The gray 280 ZX backs up and pulls off.

  Steve nods his head. “Yeah, I can tell we gon’ make a killin’ t’day. It’s warm out, you’n. Bitches is startin’ t’ come out . . .”

  “No bullshit,” Otis says. “I met this fourteen-year-old yesterday, you’n, phat t’ death.”

  Rudy frowns. “Fourteen? Muthafucka, my sister’s fourteen! I’ll kick ya fuckin’ ass if I catch you messin’ wit’ some young’uns like that, Joe! And ya ass is, like, twenty-two.”

  Twenty-two? Gotdamn! I ain’t know I was younger than all these ma’fuckas like that, I’m thinking. Fast-living niggas usually look old. But Otis got one of those little baby faces with no hair. And Rudy don’t look that old either. But Steve look raggedy as shit, with fucked-up-ass teeth.

  “How old is you, Rudy?” I ask.

  “Oh, I’m turnin’ twenty-three next month.”

  “I ain’t know you was that old,” I tell him.

  Steve smiles with them fucked-up teeth of his. “Yeah, you’n, you the youngest out here.”

  “Uh-huh,” Rudy says, nodding. “And you notice how the younger a ma’fucka is, the rougher these niggas is gettin’.”

  I smile. “So what’chu tryin’a say, Rudy?”

  “I’m sayin’ that these young’uns is crazy as hell, an’ gettin’ crazier. I ain’t stutter.” He smiles back.

  Steve says, “Yeah, I wonder if their mothers is feedin’em the wrong kind of food, you’n. These young’uns is out dey minds.”

  I smile. My mother did feed me some fucked-up food. I’m not talking about the kind you eat. I’m talking about the mental food she fed me. I mean, she was always fucking with me! And I can’t understand why, and shit. That’s why I’m reading this Maya Angelou book to try and figure my mom out. And fuck it, I’m gon’ call my mom a bitch until I see a reason to call her something else. She ain’t really did nothing to make me feel like a son. I mean, it takes more than just feeding and clothing a motherfucker to be a mother, you know.

  “Yo, Steve, here comes another one!” Rudy yells.

  I snap to attention and I go for my gun inside my jacket.

  Rudy laughs. “Gotdamn, Shank. You got da jitters dis mornin’,you’n?”

  Otis cracks a smile and turns away when I eye him. “Naw,” I say to Rudy.

  I walk to the curb and watch the streets. Steve makes another sale. And this shit is getting boring. I’d rather be at a movie somewhere. Or better yet, over Carlette’s crib, butt-naked, watching her TV, and having breakfast in bed. I mean, since I got money now, I’m really getting kind of tired of this hustling shit, standing around waiting for niggas.

  “Yo, you goin’ t’ see Who’s The Man? Shank?” Steve asks me.

  This boy must be readin’ my mind. “Yeah. That movie Posse is comin’ out, too.”

  “Ay yo, here comes that nigga Wes,” Rudy says with a smile.

  Wes pulls up in his red Integra and rolls down his window. “Where’s a safe parking space around here?”

  Steve giggles. “Hell we look like, a hotel? Ride ya ass around the block and find one.”

  “All right. I’ll be back.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t bring no guns like no Terminator, ’cause Shank is a muthafuckin’ sharp shooter,” Rudy says, bullshitting.

  Wes looks at me and smiles before he drives off.

  “Yo, you know you’n been comin’ around my way to play wit’ dese bad-ass kids,” Steve tells us. “Yo, dat ma’fucka a saint. I mean, I ain’t never met no nigga like that.”

  Wes comes walking around the corner wearing a tough-ass Tommy Hilfiger shirt. “So Shank is a sharp shooter, huh?” he says to no one in particular.

  I take out my gun and aim it at his heart. But you know, my safety clip is on.

  “Yo, yo, yo, man, he cool!” Steve shouts like a bitch.

  I chuckle and put my gun away. “Shut da fuck up, man. I’m jus’ jokin’ wit’ ’im.”

  Rudy shakes his head. “Please don’t joke wit’ me like that, you’n, ’cause we fuck around and have to kill each other out here.”

  “Oh, yeah? So you wanna draw wit’ me, Rudy?” I ask him, facing off.

  Rudy turns his back to me and shakes his head again. Punk-ass nigga!

  “Yo, Steve!” Otis yells.

  A maroon Sidekick jeep pulls up. “Yo, you got that?” this boy yells out to Steve.

  Steve looks back to me. I move into position with my hand on my .45, inside my jacket. Rudy moves to my right. And Otis positions his ass too.

  “Yo, Wes, get ready to duck if you have to,” Rudy says on the down low.

  Wes glances toward the Sidekick and backs up. “Y’all got da money?” Steve asks them.

  “Look, man, fuck that! Is we gon’ do business or what?” This edgy-looking tan-skinned dude inside the jeep is stalling. He got two b
oys with him. But we got these niggas surrounded if they try anything.

  He looks around at us. “Yo, what’s up wit’ all dis?” he asks, referring to our strategic positions. “What’chu don’t trust us?”

  “I’m sayin’, man, this the third time you came around here wit’ no money. I mean, we thinkin’ you tryin’a set us up by now. We don’t know you like dat.”

  “What, nigga? I’d shoot’cha ass right here if it was all like dat!”

  That’s my cue! I run up on the driver’s side. Before I can quite reach it, one of you’n’s boys yells, “Yo, yo, take off!”

  I bust three shots and fuck up their windows. Rudy busts two shots and hits the body. These niggas fly up the street and make a left turn.

  “Shit! Where you park at, Wes?” Steve yells.

  Wes starts to run around the corner. “Around this way!” he yells from in front of us.

  We all run behind Wes and squeeze into his Integra. “Yo, ride us around Emery Park so we can beep Butterman,” Steve says, sitting up front with Wes.

  I wanna tell Wes to chase them niggas, but they probably too far ahead by now and Wes would probably bitch anyway. Or maybe he wouldn’t? I don’t really know.

  He whips the car to Georgia Avenue, across from Emery Park. We all hop out. Steve beeps Butterman on a pay phone.

  We sit and wait for the call. I expect Wes to leave, but he doesn’t.

  “Yo, Butterman gotta buy us a damn car, you’n,” Rudy says.

  “So what happens now? Does this mean war?” Wes asks all of a sudden.

  “You muthafuckin’ right!” Rudy yells at him.

  “Yeah, I knew them niggas was crooked,” Steve says from the phone.

  A woman comes out of a nearby store and heads toward the phone. “We about to use this phone,” Rudy tells her. She looks at all five of us and decides not to argue.

  Butterman calls back.

  “Yo, these boys jus’ tried ta get us,” Steve says. Then he listens. “Naw, dey ain’t get none of the shit.” He listens again. “Yeah, they pulled off right when Shank started bussin’ . . . Aw, man, we had all kinds of sales hooked up for t’day . . . Maryland? But what do we get outta dat? . . . Oh, for real? Well, cool den . . . Aw’ight den, I got’chu.” Steve hangs up and smiles at us.

  “Yo, B said t’ chill for da rest of the day. We gon’ regroup t’mar, to go get them niggas.”

  “So what about all this money we was gon’ make t’day?” Otis asks.

  “He got some sales out in Maryland, so he said for us to hold the shit that we got and don’t worry about it.”

  “Aw, you’n, that’s dumb shit! We s’posed t’ hit them niggas back as fast as we can. Now them ma’fuckas might come back wit’ two and three carloads,” Rudy says.

  That’s the same thing I been thinking. But I’m just chilling, leaned up against Wes’ car. We don’t even know where to find these niggas.

  “That’s right,” Wes says.

  What? This ma’fucka down? I look at him and hide my smile.

  “What’chu down t’ ride around and find them, Wes?” Rudy asks him.

  “Do you already know where they’re from?” Wes ask.

  Rudy looks to Steve. “They from back Northeast, right?”

  “Yeah, back Max and them way,” Steve tells him.

  Oh, shit! Now it’s on! Max and them is gon’ try ta get cysed if they ain’t still scared. It’s been like a month since me and Butterman carried ’em, I’m thinking.

  “Max and them way? Gotdamn, Joe ’em niggas be like thirty thick back there,” Rudy says with big eyes. I guess he’s not down no more.

  “Man, ’ney ain’t got that many, but they got enough,” I tell him.

  “But they ain’t wit’ Max and them, and if they team up on us, it might mess around and be thirty,” Steve says.

  “So? This ain’t no L.A. It ain’t like all them ma’fuckas is gon’ come around here shootin’ shit up. A lot of them boys ain’t got no heart,” I argue.

  Rudy nods. “Yeah, you right. But yo, we gotta get some more niggas. So let’s jus’ chill da rest of the day and think shit over like Butterman said.”

  Everybody nods and agrees. Wes ends up taking everybody home around Northwest. But I live in Northeast, so he has to drop me off last.

  I tell him to drop me off at Super Trak up on Rhode Island Avenue. Before he parks and lets me out, he throws in some jazz-type music with Guru rappin’ on it. So I chill for a few.

  “Fuck is this?” I ask him.

  “Oh, you haven’t heard it yet? It’s ‘Jazzmatazz’ by Guru from Gang Starr, and a bunch of jazz artists.”

  “Naw, I ain’t heard it.”

  I listen and lay back into the cushioned seat.

  “Look, ah, Shank, if it’s cool with you, we can hang out. I mean, if you’re not doing anything.”

  I smile. You’n sounds like a bitch. I mean, a girl and shit.

  “Yeah, it’s cool wit’ me. I ain’t got nothin’ t’ do.”

  “Okay, well, let’s chill at my house for a while. My nerves are shot to hell.”

  I grin. “What’chu was scared?”

  He exhales like he’s been holding his breath all this time. “To tell you the truth, I was petrified.”

  I start laughing. We pull off and make a left down Twelfth Street, leading toward Michigan Avenue. I say, “It sounded like you was ready to go get them niggas to me, you’n.”

  “Yeah, I was. But that’s just because we were in the thick of it and my father always told me never to runout on your friends.”

  Friends? He calls them niggas friends! And he don’t really know me, either.

  Steve was right. This motherfucker is a saint!

  “So you would fight, huh?” I ask him, just for the fuck of it.

  “Well, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m into gangbanging or anything like that, but I’d never run if it was time to do battle. And a lot of my friends think that that’s weird because I’m so studious and all. But I figure once you make a man run when he’s supposed to stand and fight, he’s no longer a man.

  “Even so, fighting inside of a drug battle is stupid. We would have been riding around, chasing after those guys, and if we would’ve gotten pulled over by a cop, we would’ve been arrested for drug possession, possession of illegal handguns, and anything else they could pin on us.”

  Yeah, he’s right. That shit would’ve been stupid. But I was in the thick of it too. You start makin’ all kinds of mistakes when you stop thinkin’.

  “So what kind of battle would you fight in?” I ask him.

  “Huh, are you kidding me? I go to battle every day against every image of shit that that white man projects at me about you. I mean, I’m not gon’ lie, Shank. Since the first time I was around you I wanted to sit down and talk. But sometimes it seems impossible. Because it’s like, why in hell would he want to listen to me?”

  “What’chu got t’ say to me?”

  He smiles as we pull up to his apartment complex off of South Dakota Avenue.

  “Well, we can smoke some marijuana and talk about in my apartment.”

  Smoke some marijuana? Joe don’t look like the smokin’ type either.

  We walk inside his apartment on the fourth floor. His crib is the same size as my mine! He has black artwork on his walls. I got movie posters and rap artists and shit on mine. My favorite ones are Big Daddy Kane and Eric B. & Rakim, from back in the day. And this Deep Cover poster from last year.

  I sit down on this tan couch and check out Wes’ RCA VCR. He has a RCA television too. I guess he’s into that buy-American shit.

  “So,” he starts. The motherfucker went and put some glasses on. “We can chill and talk about shit now.”

  I smile. Wes don’t even sound right cursing. I guess he’s doing the shit to appeal to me. But I don’t care if he cusses or not. I mean, just because I curse don’t mean other people have to sit around me and do the shit. Be your motherfucking self!

&n
bsp; Wes hands me a rolled J and sits down beside me. He sets another J on the table in front of us.

  “You know, I always wondered what I would say if I had the chance to talk to a real-ass nigga, as some of us like to call guys like you,” he says to me. He lights the J as he talks.

  I offer him the first toke, just to see if he’ll really smoke. And yo, the motherfucker hits it. Hard!

  “Yeah, this marijuana is what they call a hallucinogen, and it’s similar to a barbiturate. It’s like a natural type of sedative that calms the nerves. At the same time, it gives you a heightened feeling of connectedness to everything around you. I didn’t realize that until I actually tried some.”

  He passes it to me. I take a toke, and this smart nigga keeps on talking.

  “The African medicine men, the Native American Shamans, and the high priests of the Orient all inhaled some type of barbiturate to bring forth that calm that the body’s natural alertness fights against. You see, the body is a war zone in itself. A battle is being waged as we speak, inside our bodies, to keep us healthy. So the entire essence of having health, Shank, is war, the body’s constant fight against disease.”

  “Yeah, dat shit sounds about right,” I say. “’Cause that AIDS shit is supposed to mess up your immune system so that ya body can’t fight no more.”

  “There it is. And then a common cold can kill you.”

  Joe got some straight-up killa! I’m startin’ t’ feel this weed already.

  “And guess what, Shank?”

  “What?”

  “The white man is your disease, my disease and everybody else’s disease.”

  I nod as I take another hit. “I know.”

  “No, you don’t know. You know why I say that?”

  “Why, ma’fucka?”

  “Because America is your hallucinogen and your barbiturate. The American streets . . . I mean, this system has young black men running around in circles, killing each other up while he makes all the real money. And oh sure, he’ll allow Butterman to get paid, but it’s no sweat off of his back. Butterman’s making pennies.”