The Cuban-American woman overheard that and chuckled. He looked good enough to lay herself. She liked intelligent men. Smart men were her type. If only her boyfriend had not tried to outsmart the law, he could have done something legal with his life.
Cynthia spotted the woman eavesdropping on their conversation and fell silent. But she had to respond to that. So she elbowed him in the ribs without words.
Shareef frowned and said, “What’s that for?”
She stared into his face and grumbled, “Your smart-ass mouth.”
He said, “You shouldn’t have brought it up then.”
WHEN THE BUS PULLED UP to their destination, twenty-one passengers—family, friends, and significant others of the inmates—filed off into the bright sun to enter the barbed-wire gates and hard concrete of a New York State correctional facility.
Shareef looked at Cynthia and asked her, “So, this is it, hunh?”
She nodded. “This is it.”
He looked up at the tall towers surrounding the prison, where armed guards were posted with sniper rifles. A mile-long triple fence of tangled, barbed-wire circles at the top of the gates said one would have to be insane to even think about escaping. Digging under the gates looked to be the only way out. But how long would that take before the sharpshooters popped you, or sent out a goon squad to beat you senseless and drag you back to a cell?
Shareef took a breath as he surveyed things up close. For the first time in his life he could witness a prison facility not from a television or movie screen.
He told himself, Damn! I’d never wanna be in this place. This is crazy!
Cynthia snapped him out of his daydream by grabbing his arm.
“Come on. You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” she teased him.
“Nah, it just hit me for a minute.”
She nodded and said, “Yeah. That’s how I felt the first couple of times. But then you get used to it.” She said, “But the key is not to think about the gates, the guards, or the concrete buildings. You have to think about the people who are locked inside. I mean, these guys are all human in here. Everybody makes their share of mistakes, they’ve just made bigger mistakes than the rest of us.”
Sounded like she had her rationalization all mapped out. How else could she continue to visit a man in prison? You had to believe they were still men who just happened to be locked away for the time being, and not view them as prisoners who were no longer allowed to be men. So Shareef understood her optimism. It was the right way to think, humane and respectable.
They stepped up to the visitors’ entrance together and walked through a metal detector similar to airport security. Any and all dangerous objects would be confiscated, along with a rejection of such a visitor and an imminent arrest. All the warning signs reinforced the rules. However, men and women were sometimes desperate. So every once in a blue moon a visitor would put his or her own freedom on the line by attempting to aid an imprisoned loved one.
Shareef walked through the metal detector behind Cynthia and took a deep breath. The metal detector made him feel guilty about any-and everything he may have gotten away with over the years. Then he stood as still as a statue on the other side of the machine to make sure it was cool.
“You’re good,” the security guard told him.
Shareef nodded and walked forward.
Cynthia smiled at him. “Are you sure you’re all right with this? They’re gonna let you back out,” she assured him.
He laughed it off. He said, “I know, right? I’m feeling like I’m going into this motherfucker for real.”
“Like I said, you gotta get used to it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s easy for you to say, you’ve been here before.”
She started laughing as they made their way to the visiting area.
When they made it all the way inside, visitors and prisoners were everywhere: black, white, Asian, Italian, Latino, Russian, Aryan—you name it. They could even walk out to the prison yard together. Shareef couldn’t believe that part. He was expecting glass windows and phones, or monitored tables like he had seen in various television shows and movies. So he watched the prisoners and their visitors walking out in the yard together and became confused for a minute.
He turned to Cynthia and said, “Yo, we can walk out in the yard with them?”
She grinned and answered, “Yup.”
The next minute she was embracing a well-built, walnut brown man in a perfectly clean, white T-shirt, green pants, and state-issued boots. Shareef didn’t even see him approach them. Then he backed away and kissed Cynthia on the cheek.
“So, you actually brought him here,” the brother stated to her. He was still surprised by it.
“And he was brave enough to come,” she responded.
The man faced Shareef with his hand extended.
“Michael Springfield, man.”
Shareef took his hand in his and remembered him being taller during his high school days. Maybe that was because of his youth back then, and his adoration for the man as a popular street hustler. But in prison, Michael Springfield was brought down to size, with no jewelry, no fly clothes, no expensive rides, and only one lady. He also had low-cut hair that was even all the way around, no fade.
“Good to meet you, man. Shareef Crawford.”
Michael smiled, with good teeth and genuine friendliness.
“I know who you are, playboy. You made a whole lot of lonely nights bearable for a nigga in here. I gotta tell you.”
Cynthia overheard him and laughed. She already knew the story.
Shareef chuckled and said, “Well, it’s always good to know a black man’s reading my work. I don’t get a lot of that. It’s mostly women giving me love.”
Michael said, “Shit, playboy, that’s the right kind of love to get. Every nigga in here wish he had that kind of love now.”
He looked at Cynthia. She grinned at him and said nothing.
Then he turned back to Shareef. “Let’s walk and talk on the yard.”
Shareef was still hesitant about walking the yard, but what could he do? He couldn’t turn the man down and go out like a scared-straight punk, so he strolled out on the yard following Michael’s lead. Cynthia followed them, but not too closely, so that the two men could have a little privacy in their conversation.
As soon as they walked out in front of her, Michael asked his guest, “So, you like her or what?”
Shareef frowned and played the dummy role for a second.
“Who?”
Michael looked him dead in the face. “Come on, playboy, you know who I’m talking about. Me and her cool like that. We talk about everything.”
Shareef nodded and said, “I see.” Then he paused. He answered, “Okay, well, yeah, she’s a nice girl.”
Michael nodded back to him. He said, “Did you fuck her brains out?” His tone was so nonchalant that Shareef had to make sure he heard the man right.
“Ask me that again?”
Michael laughed, amused at his own candor.
He said, “She told me you like to speak from the heart, so go ahead and be you, man. I can’t hurt you in here. Them days are long gone for me anyway. That’s why I like wearing pure white tees now. I surrendered from all the bullshit. Jealousy. Envy. Hatred. Pride. Anger. All that shit’ll end up gettin’ you right back in here.”
He said, “I know better now. But once you got them years on your back, they gon’ make you do at least half of ’em. And I got a whole lot of years left on me for the shit I did out there, playboy. Believe me.”
Michael still didn’t appear that old. Maybe it was the haircut that made him look so young. He had been in prison for at least ten years already.
Shareef listened to his words while watching the men in the yard who were watching them. He even nodded to those who seemed to recognize him. Even though they had only been together for a few minutes, with armed security guards and other prisoners eyeing their every move, the time between them seemed
infinite. Their short walk inside the yard was like a mile long.
“So, what kind of book would you want me to write? A book about a surrender from the street life, and call it, I Surrender?” Shareef asked his host.
Michael leaned his head sideways toward the sunny sky and nodded while he thought it over.
He repeated, “I Surrender.” Then he nodded again. “That’s a good fuckin’ title right there, playboy. She told me you called yourself a genius.”
Michael was grinning from ear to ear, proud as hell of his choice of a writer.
Shareef said, “I’m just using your own words, playboy. That’s what a good writer does. He takes the information that’s right there in front of him and makes it work.” But he couldn’t recall telling Cynthia that he thought of himself as a genius. Maybe she had read that somewhere. He surely had said it before, just not to her.
His host said, “Well, yeah, I surrendered, but first we gotta start with the war. You know that.”
Suddenly, his demeanor turned back into street warrior mode.
He said, “You get caught up in that shit, man, that lifestyle, and you can’t fuckin’ sleep. I mean, every hour is like the front line. You gotta have ya’ guns ready. ’Cause these motherfuckers are definitely shootin’ at you. And I don’t mean like real bullets every day, but mental bullets. People plottin’ to take you down.”
He looked straight into Shareef’s mug to make sure he was recording his intensity.
He said, “It’s a real human chess game out there, playboy. And I ain’t even play chess until I got in this place. But now I play it. Playing wit’ these Italian niggas. They funny in here, man. Too many of ’em been watching that Sopranos shit.”
Shareef smiled, but he was focused at that point, and all about the business of reporting and writing. I Surrender was indeed a perfect title. Every prisoner understood that statement. Most had not surrendered voluntarily, but once they had been captured, they were forced to deal with that reality.
He said, “So, how do we start this off? We go back to your childhood years or what?”
He could already see the story taking shape. It would be another Manchild in the Promised Land, the classic Harlem autobiography by Claude Brown. Or Down These Mean Streets, the Spanish Harlem tale of Piri Thomas. But this one would be more up-to-date from Shareef Crawford, using the on-point ghostwriting styles of Alex Haley and Quincy Troupe. It was all about pulling the most truth from your subject. There were no lies allowed, except for the ones that made the story bigger. Such was the truth of all great books. They were recreations of the largest ideas of humanity. The smaller ideas rarely deserved a book, so they were ignored by the public. The public craved the big dreams. Yet how big could Michael Springfield’s dream be? That was the question Shareef would soon have to answer for himself. Was the urban dream of Michael Springfield big enough to re-create?
Michael answered, “I grew up on the West Side at One Twenty-eighth and Amsterdam. I had two older brothers who died in the war before I was even drafted. And I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or no overseas shit like that. I’m talkin’ ’bout the wars in Harlem. The motherfuckin’ street wars. There needs to be a book about that shit.”
He said, “And I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no rap shit, either. Them attention-gettin’ niggas be clownin’ our history. So if you gon’ talk about it, then you need to get the story right.”
“And you got the right story?” Shareef asked him.
Michael looked at him and frowned. “Shit, playboy, you ain’t in here by accident. This shit right here is a hustler’s destiny.”
Shareef asked him, “But how many other hustlers in here could tell it?”
It was a legitimate question. The writer was back in his normal position of authority. He needed to know that the man’s words were worth the real deal from his pen.
Michael began to smile, understanding the writer’s technique. He had him inside the prison walls, now he had to show and prove.
He looked around at some of the clueless prisoners eyeing them in the yard and responded, “Let’s put it this way: if half these motherfuckers could have read your books, studied your style, and masterminded a way to get you in here to talk to them, then they deserve to say something. But since it didn’t go down like that, then that’s obviously telling you something.”
He said, “I read somewhere that victory goes to the man who is most prepared to win. Well, I’m prepared to win. But I can’t speak for these other guys. You know what I mean? Let each man speak for himself.”
Shareef nodded and was impressed with the man. He could hold his own.
By that time they had walked nearly the entire yard and were approaching the gates at the far end. Cynthia was still following behind them, close enough to be in their party, but far enough away to stay out of their business.
Shareef stopped walking and said, “So, if we’re gon’ make this all happen, then I need you to make notes on your chronology; what came first, what came second, what came third, the whole nine. That makes it easier for us to organize. And we go step by step, chapter by chapter, day by day. It’s a long process.”
Michael paused and nodded back to him. He said, “Well, all I got is time in this place, playboy. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. We got years to put this shit together.”
No they didn’t, either. Shareef was an impatient writer. He would want the story yesterday. Last week. Last year. Then he could take his time with it. That was the major difference between fiction and nonfiction. In fiction, you could create from your own recollections and the recollections of others on your own time. But with this story, he had to wait to hear from his subject first—he was on some one else’s time. So how many visits would it take him to get it all?
Shareef extended his hand anyway. He said, “We’ll work it out.” That’s when the reality hit him, inside the far gate of the yard in the New York State correctional facility where eyes were always watching them.
Michael Springfield shook his hand in agreement, while Shareef wondered what would be the final result of all of his time, toil, and research. How many hours, days, and nights would he spend away from his wife, mistress, and kids in Florida to write this story? And how much would he be paid for it? Those were all real concerns.
Michael smiled again and whispered. “You still didn’t answer my question, though, Shareef. How did she feel?”
He was back to asking about Cynthia again. Shareef began to wonder if Michael had had private time with her on any of her visits. He assumed that the man had, but he blocked that thought from his mind. How many degrees of connection did he care to confirm?
He answered, “Some things just ain’t meant to be talked about like that, man. Maybe I’m just old school.”
Michael studied his calm reserve and nodded to him. The man was telling the truth. It wasn’t his M.O. to fuck and give names. Shareef was the private party thrower. He only wrote from his ideas, rarely from actualities.
Michael said, “Okay, I can respect that. I don’t know nothing either then. That’s loyalty.”
He raised his fist and pumped it forward.
Shareef grinned and accepted the man’s show of respect. Respect was a good thing. They could build from there on equal footing.
WHEN SHAREEF and Cynthia left the state prison and headed to the bus stop to return to Harlem, she asked him, “So, what do you think?”
Shareef was still pulling all the details together in his mind, trying to remind himself where the story begins: I grew up on the West Side of Harlem at 128th and Amsterdam.
Then he responded to Cynthia’s question.
“It was interesting,” he told her. That’s all he wanted to say about it. Anything more would tax too much of his concentration. He wanted to slip back into his zone of deep thought. It was the way he worked. The world could all go to hell while he was thinking, because thinking was his heaven—as much a heaven as great sex.
Cynthia read as m
uch from him and left him to his thoughts. But she did grab his hand at the bus stop. She liked him, and she wanted to remind him of that. Michael Springfield had even given her a second okay to fuck him as she pleased. He respected the man that much. And he realized that a private man would not intentionally hurt her.
Back in Harlem
EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON, two brown-skinned East Indian men walked toward a run-down, storefront off Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, north of 125th Street. The shorter and older man in front, graying hair on the edges, pulled out a ring of keys from his beige khakis as the younger, taller man followed close behind him. They were fifty-something and thirty-something in age, respectively.
“This is a good location here, you know, right?” the older man said to his younger friend.
The younger man, adorned in gold jewelry, was more interested in seeing it all and hearing the price tags of business first.
He nodded quickly and said, “Yeah, let me see, let me see it.”
“I’m gonna let you see it,” the older man fussed at him. “That’s what we’re here for.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the younger man repeated in haste.
As soon as they got the heavy front door open, a whiff of repugnant air rushed into their noses.
“Shit, what is that smell?” the younger man asked immediately. He raised his right hand over his nose to protect it from the foulness. “It smells like a dead cat and dog in here.”
The older man was hesitant as he walked farther into the empty store to investigate. Sitting in the center of the open floor was a dead man strapped to a chair with duct tape who had been shot to death.
The younger man saw that and cursed even louder.
“Shit!”
The older man was more poised. He slowly raised his right hand to cover his nose.
“Fuck me,” he cursed himself. He thought, This is the last thing I needed right now.
WHEN THE NYPD ARRIVED at the scene, they had a million questions for the older man.
“When was the last time you were here?”