Then a feminine voice: “We called the cops already. Just lay him out on the floor.”
“Wesss! Don’t die on me, man! Don’t die!”
I can feel my chest rising frantically.
Air! Air! Breathe! Breathe!
I see NeNe’s teary face over me. “No, no, no-o-o-o! Wes, baby, don’t close your eyes! Don’t close ya fuckin’ eyes!”
The feminine voice: “Calm down. All we can do is wait for the police.”
The deep, male voice: “Goddamn shame! Young’uns ain’t got no damn sense.”
My chest is caving in! My head feels light! I’m shaking. I’m losing it! I’m losing it!
Oh, God! I’m sorry, Mom! I’m sorry! I love you! Moooooom!
Epilogue
Butterman AKA Jeffrey Kirkland, Jr.
Twenty-four people were killed in Washington during one week in June. The homicide rate was up to, like, 232.
It’s August now. I’m chilling down in Hampton, Virginia, hiding out until shit calms down in D.C. I got a slammin’-ass beachfront apartment with a balcony. Only cost me $725 a month. But I have to pay the utilities.
That nigga Shank cut me a short and got me for fifteen grand! It’s my own fault though. I started to trust that nigga too much. He wasn’t my real friend or no shit. I guess now I’ll just hustle here and there and wait for my boy Red to get out of Lorton in, like, a year or two, you know? I still got eighty Gs in the bank for us.
Wes ended up getting shot in the shoulder right on NeNe’s aunt’s block off Benning Road Northeast—the same day that I jetted out. Boy thought he was dead, but he had just lost a lot of blood and he fucked around and fainted.
Wes is cool. He ain’t deserve that shit. Niggas are just getting too crazy out here. I heard he’s going to grad school next year now. I wish him nothing but luck. Nothing but luck!
Me? Just let me say this: I fucked around and waited for Shank’s ass that Saturday up at Super Trak, and that nigga never came. We checked that Brookland Apartments building where I let him off. Them boys acted like they never even heard of Shank. Then Jerry and them were like, “Fuck him! Let’s roll.”
We rolled down to Max and then set up around H Street Northeast and hopped out with all our guns and shit. But something told me to chill by the car for a few.
As soon as Max and his boys came out from around the back, he was yelling, “Yo, we ain’t do that dumb shit, Joe! What’s up wit’ all dis? I was jus’ bullshittin’ wit’chu.” He was talking about killing Rudy and Kevy in that shootout with them Benning Road niggas.
I mean, I knew Max and them ain’t do that shit. I just wanted to find out exactly who we were up against, you know? But stupid-ass Jerry shot at him anyway before I could even say shit.
All I heard was, Bop! Bop! Bop! Niggas separated on both sides and started breaking every which way. Max had, like, eight of his boys against us.
Steve broke back to the car with me. “Let’s get da fuck outta here, you’n! That nigga Jerry out his damn mind.”
Yo, he ain’t even have to tell me twice!
As soon as we started to roll, I thought about picking the rest of them niggas up. They were trapped in all them gunshots like some kind of old-fashioned cowboy movie. Then a police cruiser whipped around the corner from the left.
That shit ran right past me and Steve like they didn’t know we were in it. Then we heard more sirens coming when we made it around that first corner. So I rolled the lemon back over to Northwest on Florida Avenue, where me and Steve left it and jumped out to break around his crib down in the Shaw area, behind Howard University.
Next day, I packed up my shit, jumped in my 3000, and rolled. Word was out that them niggas found out where I lived, so I was out before the sun came up.
Steve told me Otis and Boo both got shot at and arrested with, like, four of Max’s niggas. Max was shot dead, taking three bullets in his chest. Jerry almost escaped, trying to run and jump on a 92 bus at Eighth and H Streets. But Max’s trigger-man, who Shank had punked out with that handshake shit when we rolled around there that time, ran Jerry down. He shot him in broad daylight in front of, like, thirty witnesses out on that busy-ass intersection. And do you know that you’n ran around in an alley and the cops never caught him? Ain’t that some shit? Anyway, Jerry took one to the chest and one to the head. All this shit was in the newspapers. I guess he died like a real-ass nigga, huh?
That makes me think of this new dumb joke I made up. Because see, I ain’t the one to sit around and wait to get snagged by no cops and sent to jail, or shot the hell up or no shit. Bink wouldn’t have stayed around either. But that nigga Bink too damn cool to end up in some dumb shit like I’m in now anyway.
Well, here it goes. This dumb nigga robbed a bank for ten million dollars and got away with it. Then he hooked up his boys, his family, gave to charity, and lived like he was about to die of AIDS in a year, buying up everything he could get his hands on.
After a while, the jealous niggas that didn’t get paid started to dime on him, helping the feds to track down all the loose money. And when the FBI finally caught up to his ass, one white investigator laughed and said, “Shit, man, with all that damn money you got away with, you could’a been living in fucking Australia by now! I mean, I just don’t get it. Why did you choose to stay in the same dirty neighborhood?”
Dude looked up at him, handcuffed to a chair with droopy-ass eyes, and said, “Well, ta tell ya da honest t’ God truth, Mr. Officer, I, ahh, didn’t think I was allowed to leave da country. And I’s afraid’a wo’da.”
I shake my head and smile. “Dumb muthafucka.” And what? I mean, I can’t bring LaToya the fuck back!
I’m still living, and, you know, I’m trying to move on with my life. But for real though, I’m lonely like shit. I don’t feel nothing but emptiness.
Then I saw that Poetic Justice movie last week, and that shit ain’t do me no damn good! So I guess in the long run, Red was right: Crime don’t pay. And I still ain’t really speaking to my family. That’s fucked up! Ain’t it?
But on the real tip, money ain’t shit when nobody loves you. Wes was right too: I don’t know what love is. But how can a nigga love in this fucked-up-ass world they got us living in?
Dirty money leads to dirty living every time. So I guess I’m a pig now—that don’t fly straight. Scarface. 1983.
Wes AKA Raymond West
I am a very lucky man. It’s Monday, November 22, 1993. And I’m still living.
When I got shot in May, the bullet went into my right shoulder and lodged inside the bone and muscle fiber under my right arm. The doctors said that they could actually allow it to stay there without it doing any harm, but my mother insisted that they take it out.
I was told she screamed, “Are you crazy! I don’t want no darn bullet sitting inside my son’s body! What the hell kind of doctors are you?”
I laughed when I was told about it. But I was unconscious when it happened.
My mother went on to curse NeNe out in English, Spanish, and German! She didn’t want her “ten miles in radius to my son!”
I didn’t at all agree with this. But I wasn’t exactly in any position to argue, was I? The only thing my mother knew was that her only child had gotten himself shot while trying to visit “some loose floozy” that he had gotten himself somehow mixed up with.
Of course, NeNe didn’t take this lying down. I was told that a big mess ensued inside D.C.’s General Hospital hallway over who could and who could not visit Raymond West, “During his recovery or ever!” my mother had argued.
It took three months for me to gain full recovery of the proper use of my right arm. I then ended up receiving a population statistics research job in Virginia where I can actually use some of the things that I studied in political science. I did well on my GRE exam, and Professor Cobbs secured me a scholarship to help out with financing grad school next year—along with the money I still haven’t told my mother about. He also allowed me to talk to the So
utheast youth who participated in his program this past summer.
It seems they were all excited about asking me how I knocked a gun away from a guy, and how I felt when I got myself shot. I guess these events have now validated me as one who knows how it is, which is crazy! However, I don’t think they would have listened to me quite so pointedly had I not knocked away a gun, kept my wallet, gotten myself shot at, and lived to tell about it.
They did catch two of the guys suspected of assaulting and shooting me that night, but on some other charges.
Newspapers and TV crews wanted a story, but my mother ran them away as well. All they were concerned about was running some gang- or street-related crimebuster story anyway. The white media doesn’t give a damn about young black men like me! How about interviewing guys like me before we get shot or killed?
The big news today is that the government voted against having D.C. become the nation’s fifty-first state by a congressional vote of 277 to 153. D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton is now beefing up the fight, speaking about how unfair taxation without representation is to the District.
A month earlier, Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly had actually asked President Bill Clinton if she could deploy the National Guard to control crime-infested areas inside the District. Not only did Clinton turn her down, but D.C. police officers were pretty pissed off, saying that she had earlier cut police budgets and lessened the police population in the District.
In the hip-hop world, Tupac Shakur is in constant trouble, Snoop Doggy Dogg is set to release his album Doggy Style this week, with a trial coming up for the alleged murder of a man in California at the end of this month, and the media looks as if it’s launching a full-fledged war against “gangster lyrics,” claiming that it instigates a lot of the crime, sex, drug use, and black-on-black murder.
On the more positive side though, I’ve just finished reading Essence magazine’s special November issue on black men in which they interviewed Arsenio Hall and Speech from Arrested Development. Queen Latifah has an awesome song in “U.N.I.T.Y.” Tupac’s “Keep Ya Head Up” now looks hypocritical for Tupac after being charged in New York City for supposedly sodomizing a twenty-year-old woman along with a group of friends. Two weeks before that he was arrested for shooting two police officers in Atlanta. But he hasn’t been proven guilty in either case yet, so let me hold my thoughts on it.
Anyhow, several other songs are being made against violence like “Gangsta Lean” and “Put Down the Guns.”
Speaking about rap music, I wonder what Shank is up to. I sure hope he hasn’t gotten himself killed or arrested. Walt told me that J ran from the District for his life. I’ve heard nothing about Shank, so I guess he’s somewhere in hiding too.
Me? Well, my mother kind of forced me to move back in with her until I decide what grad school I want to go to next fall. She’s been hinting at Howard to keep me near. I mean, I feel like some kind of Mommy’s boy! But what can I really say to her after getting myself shot and almost killed? She wants to know every damn place I go now and demands a phone number! She actually calls to check up on me too!
“I can’t let you get away from me, honey. You are my only son,” she constantly tells me now.
By the way, Howard’s football team went eleven-oh this year and will be playing in the Division I playoffs for a bowl game next week. Isn’t that something!
As far as NeNe and my love life is concerned, I’ve been talking on and off with Sybil. But NeNe can’t have this number, and she doesn’t want to talk to me when I call her now anyway. I guess it was kind of embarrassing for even her to go up against my red-headed mother over her only son.
I just wish NeNe the best now. I hope that she’s able to find another guy like me and stay on course toward a proper family home. I mean, God knows how so many young black women like her are ending up pregnant with no spouse. Then again, NeNe was always pretty conscious of protection against pregnancy. I can give her that credit.
As far as crime and the D.C. streets, I mean, what do you want me to do? Walt, Marshall, and I still hang out, and Derrick received that job in Baltimore which only allows him to visit with us every other weekend. And all we can do is continue to live while staying away from problem areas.
I believe American society is rapidly approaching chaos that can’t be stopped by laying blame on hiphop culture, guns, or the black family. The white supremacist culture of America and the world has to take the bulk of the responsibility. You can’t expect black people to continue to live within conditions of fluctuating poverty forever without them going crazy. Something’s going to have to be done to uplift the spirit and morale of the American poor, and it can’t be done with words. America must find some capital to eventually shell out and begin to reverse this wheel of destruction.
All I, Raymond West, can do is live, marry, and raise proper children who will do their best to live right and call out against injustice. Like the concerned citizens who scared away those guys and called the police for me when I got shot that night, more people are going to have to stand up against not only crime, but unemployment, foreign-trade policy, and all the other gimmicks employed so the poor stay poor. And if more people were able to keep their thoughts and actions positive, we could change a lot of things. But then again, conscious people have been saying this since the beginning of time. In a nutshell, the elder brother Tony was right. We black Americans are gonna have to accept responsibility for what we become and how we react to situations in our community, not “the man.”
I know, I know, I’m starting to preach to you, right? Well, guess what? I’m planning to teach and continue to do the best that I can do to get involved in bringing about a reversal of the dire situation in our community. Now, what are you planning to do?
Shank AKA Darnell Hall
It’s 1994. Four hundred and sixty-seven were killed in D.C. in ’93, fifteen more than last year. My mom told me a white cop was one of the last to die when he got shot in the face on Fourteenth Street around my old neighborhood in Southeast.
I’ve been in New York now since last summer with my cousin Cal. Me and Mom write each other and talk on the phone now. Well, I do more writing and she does more phone calling. She keeps me up on the D.C. news and shit, like when their water system was fucked up for three days. And when, like, twelve D.C. cops were arrested for some crooked-ass shit that they were doing on the streets.
Yeah, me and my cousin Cal been hanging out in New York with a whole crew of cool artist-type niggas since last July. We even ended up getting jobs with this movie company when this white man heard us arguing about that movie Menace II Society in this popular deli restaurant in Manhattan. I mean, you’d be surprised how many people in New York are trying to get paid.
Anyway, I was saying to Cal that that Menace II Society shit wasn’t going to change anything. But my cousin was saying that they showed “the real,” and how niggas don’t be thinking. Yeah, whatever.
Then this hip, happy-faced white man introduced himself and asked us if we would like to read and review movie scripts, you know, to give his company the young black male point of view on film. It was just me and Cal that day, and I let Cal do the talking because I still don’t really fuck with white people like that. You know what I’m saying? Them motherfuckers have to prove peace to me. And then some!
Anyway, they pay us pretty good. I’ve been reading a lot and getting a whole lot of ideas from that shit to use in my raps. Plus, I see that Morgan Freeman finally got some balls by directing that Arsenio Hall movie, Bopha, about a South African family. Danny Glover played this father who wanted his son to join the police force even though his son was a revolutionary.
That shit was kind of good. White people are some motherfuckers though, ain’t they? But right now I’m waiting for that Harlem movie, Sugar Hill, to come out. Dude that played the lead singer in The Five Heartbeats, Michael Wright, stars in it with Wesley Snipes. And Surviving the Game, starring Ice T—Ernest Dickerson’s second movie afte
r directing Juice—is coming out. And when Al Pacino’s Carlito’s Way came out up here, a lot of Puerto Ricans were excited. It was all right, too. But I don’t know why they ain’t use a real Latino. And why did he have to have a white woman as his girl? That’s the type of questions me and Cal ask in our reports after we read the scripts. But of course they did it for the money. That’s white people for you.
Me and Cal living all right! We got shit going on from our two-bedroom apartment in Queens. Then we meet up with the rest of the crew and ride to the parties and clubs and shit, like, thirty niggas deep sometimes. But we not into that tough-crew shit. I mean, I was about to fuck this nigga up in Harlem last week. Hopps was talking more shit than I could take from one nigga.
But my crew chilled that shit out. Squashed it, you know. We don’t roll to get into no fights and shit. And like I always knew, a lot of times if you hang out with niggas that ain’t right, your shit ends up not being right.
I wrote a song about that tough-type shit. But I don’t glorify it like them West Coast rappers do. It’s called “Lucky #7.”
Here’s a little flavor bite. All right, bust this:
Yo, let me tell you the nitty gritty about America’s capital city.
A lot of brothers are living shitty. But up in G-Town, them white folks is all high siddity.
They like to print us on front pages.
Shouting, “Look at these criminals!
Shouldn’t we keep them in steel cages?”
And many brothers ain’t givin’ a fuck.
Living life, day by day on their luck, hoping they don’t get bucked.
But then I rolled a fuckin’ seven.
And like Griff said, I was a nigga headed for heaven.
Now people say I smile more often.
I guess so, my brother. I’m not a zombie in no coffin.
Now later this year, I’m turning twenty-one.
I’m not a gangsta no more, and I’m no longer on the fuckin’ run.