Shyt List 5: Smokin' Crazies The Finale' (The Cartel Publications Presents)

by Reign (T. Styles)

  “Right, Squeeze. You have a plan?” Bricks didn’t want to hear her idea but out of respect, asked all the same. “We not talking about a few kids. It’s a hundred or more.”

  Everybody looked at her, almost as if they were waiting on her to fail. In the condition she was in, she was no leader and she knew it. Her team was aware too but they wanted her to bury herself, in the hopes that she’d realize that mentally she was no longer capable.

  “Ya’ll remember all those buses at the convention center?” Yvonna asked, thinking off the top of her head. “The ones parked out front?”

  “Yeah. What we gonna do with them?” Swoopes inquired, wondering where she was going.

  “Let’s see if we can get our hands on two and get these kids out of here.” She surprised all of them, when she actually came through with a good plan. Maybe she wasn’t as far gone as they thought.

  Three Hours Later

  It was midnight when they found themselves in a hotel room. It was located in a remote part of Virginia. Thanks to Ming’s rich ass, which everyone somehow forgot, they were able to secure rooms for everyone at The Comfort Inn. When the younger children were settled in their beds, they held a meeting with three of the eldest teenagers.

  “Thank you so much,” the teenager named Porter said, shaking their hands. The other teenagers stood behind him, with suspicious eyes. “What can we do to help you?" He was looking at Ming. For the first time she felt appreciated. “Anything, you just name it.”

  “You don’t have to do anything to repay me back.” She grinned. “Just be safe.”

  Swoopes grabbed her up and planted a kiss on her lips. “I’m proud of you, ma. You did good today.” They were definitely a couple and it was obvious now.

  “Thank you, baby.”

  “We’ll try to be safe.” Porter said, taking a moment to think about their lives, before they rescued them from the trailer. “I just hope they leave us alone. All we want is to live and be free to start all over.” Knowing who Yvonna was, after hearing Ming speak about the legend on the bus earlier that day, he addressed her next. “What can we do to thank you?”

  “Live your best life.” She shrugged. “That’s all I want.”

  “I will try!” Porter looked at his friends, “We all will and we’ll do it in your honor.”

  “Don’t do anything in my honor.” She scowled, hating the attention. “I’m not who you think I am. If you do nothing else in life, I ask that you don’t be anything like me.”

  He frowned. “I don’t know why you are so modest, and why you believe you are unworthy of appreciation, but I will always thank you. And I will always remember your face.” He looked at his friends again. “We all will.”

  “So what will you do from here?” Bricks asked. “You’re a long way from everything. Do you even know where to start?”

  “Right, because it’s one thing to be free, and its another thing to have to take care of yourself.” Swoopes added. “Not to be a bug in your juice but you need a plan if you want to make it out here.”

  “I managed to save a little money, without my master knowing. And thanks to the lady called Ming,” he smiled at her, “which we will speak about always, we should be fine for a couple of days.” He sighed. “After that most of the younger ones will probably go into foster care. A lot of the older kids, like us will seek jobs. When we’re settled, we’ll come back for as many as we can. I think that’s all we can do for now.”

  “But if they go back in the system, are you afraid that AFCOG may find them?” Bricks said.

  Porter grimaced. “I’m tired of being afraid. Tired of not being able to live my life. We have to fight now and thanks to you guys we can do that.” Then he looked at the floor. “I do wish it was a way we could help bring Rufus to justice, but we don’t know how.”

  “If things work in our favor,” Swoopes interjected, “you won’t have to look over your shoulder for too much longer. Just hang as low as you can, until we can get things straight. If shit move real good, you’ll be free to do whatever you want in a matter of weeks.”

  “He’s right. Once Rufus is done, you should be good.” Yvonna responded. “Oh and there’s a man name Reverend Dynamite.” She reached in her pocket and handed them a number. “Apparently he’s helping a lot of kids get on their feet, maybe he can help you too.”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  When Bricks’ cell phone went off, he stepped a few feet away to answer it. “Hello.” Hearing his comrade’s voice, he smiled. “What up, Kelsi? Everything cool with…”

  Silence.

  “What…what you talkin’ ‘bout?” Yvonna turned around to face her man. They all did. Judging by the tone in his voice, she knew something was off. “What you telling me, Kelsi? I’m not understanding what you telling me right now. Slow down, because…because I thought you just said…”

  Silence.

  The phone dropped out of his hand, and he fell against a soda machine, rocking it loudly against the wall. “What is it, baby?” Yvonna inquired, as she attempted to place her arm around him. “Who is that on the phone?”

  Bricks started swinging and when he almost hit both of the girls, Swoopes ran to hold him back. “Fuck is up wit’ you, slim?!” Swoopes inquired. “You wilding out on the girls!”

  “Somebody killed my brother.” He looked at him with glazed over eyes. “Kelsi just told me somebody killed my fuckin’ brother!”

  BRICKS

  The hip-hop music didn’t make a lot of sense to Bricks, as he sat at the bar with his head down. He tried to understand the lyrics to the rap song by Biggie that he rocked with many times in the past. Now when he attempted to remember the lines, all he could think about was that his brother was murdered and that they weren’t on the best of terms before he died. Had he known it would’ve ended like that, he would’ve told him how much he loved him and how everyday of his life, he looked up to him.

  When he gave up on the lyrics, he ordered two more vodka shots and a Corona, bringing his count to ten vodka’s and five beers for the day. He was working hard for the eleventh, when Swoopes slid into the hole in a wall, after looking for him for hours.

  Swoopes gave Bricks a once over and glided in the seat next to him, as if they didn’t know one another. “Give me whatever he had,” he examined Bricks’ mental state and said, “and another for him too.” He slammed a fifty on the bar. “That’s it for now.”

  Bricks peered up at the bartender and then over at Swoopes. “What you doing here?” Bricks placed his head back down. “I don’t feel like getting into it wit’ you right now. I got a lot of shit I’m dealing wit’, just get the fuck out.” His breath smelled as if vodka coursed through his veins, in replacement of blood.

  “I don’t feel like gettin’ into it wit’ you either.” Swoopes downed his shot and slammed it on the counter. “Pour me another.” He told the bartender who quickly fulfilled his request. “You get any other information yet? On what happened to your peoples?”

  Bricks lifted his head just enough, so it wouldn’t slam back down on the bar. Twisting his neck, he observed the man who shot him not even a year earlier, resulting in his hospitalization. He was stupid for partnering with this dude and he knew it. Their beef was the pink elephant in the room that kept shitting all over the place, while everybody ignored it. He thought about YBM, the dudes he ran with at one point and time. And suddenly he understood exactly what was going on. Swoopes had set him up and killed his brother. From the inside he portrayed himself as an acquaintance but he was definitely foe.

  “You, dirty mothafucka!” His words slurred and the extra drool which hung on his bottom lip, made him look pathetic. “You had something to do with this didn’t you?” He tried to point a finger in his face but he couldn’t lift it further than his chest. “You killed my brother.”

  Swoopes shook his head and felt empathy for the man. He was drunk, defenseless and unable to articulate at the moment. Swoopes’ sorrow didn’t last long, when Bricks
summoned enough strength, to come down on his head with a Corona bottle.

  Engaged, Swoopes jumped off the stool, gripped Bricks by the shirt and lifted him off of his feet. He was about to slam his fist into his hanging bottom lip, when Bricks’ head nodded to the side. Although his eyes were open, the man was clearly at his limit. Instead of injuring him, he threw him back on the stool as if he were a hot bag of shit.

  “Fuck this nigga!” He huffed, before grabbing a napkin, to tend to the wound on his head. Then he pushed out the exit. “If he want to wallow over spilled blood let him do it.” He got halfway down the street when Bricks’ bobble head came to mind. In the condition he was in, he was a sitting duck for even the smallest of predators. Turning back around he decided to make sure he got out safe. It was a good thing he did, because that quickly, someone was scheming on the cash Bricks had dangling from his pocket. Swoopes approached the crook and said, “Unless you wanna suck on this,” he opened his coat revealing his weapon, “I suggest you step the fuck off.” The man’s scamper awoken Bricks who had nodded off yet again.

  “What are you doing here? I said I want to be left alone.”

  As far as I know, this is a public bar.” He looked at the bartender and grabbed another napkin to nurse the bruise on his head. “What you say, man? Is this a public or private spot?”

  “Long as you got cash, membership has its privileges.”

  Swoopes chuckled and looked back at Bricks. “You see, champ. I got just as much right to be here as you.” Bricks’ head started leaning closer to the counter and Swoopes pulled the back of his coat, so his head would rise and hang backwards.

  “Whatchu want wit’ me?” Bricks asked, shaking him off. “Just go.”

  “Like I said, I’m chilling, but I wanted you to know, I ain’t have shit to do with your brother’s death. And I know you know that already.”

  Bricks wiped his hand down the front of his face, before it slammed against the counter. “I don’t know shit.”

  “Yes you do. If you even thought I had something to do with it, we would’ve had that conversation the moment you got the news.” He sipped on the Corona he didn’t drink earlier. “And not after you got all drunk and busted either. I’m not the enemy. Not right now anyway.” Since it appeared that at the moment, Bricks couldn’t speak he continued. “And what happened between me and you, when I shot you was street business. Anyway, we both know when this shit is done, we gonna have our time if you got a mind to get back at me. But right now, in the name of something worse than anything we could do on the streets,” he said thinking of AFCOG, “I called a truce and I hang by my word. I didn’t have nothing to do with the death of your brother, but I’m sorry it happened.”

  “Whatever.” Bricks slurred. His head appeared to be magnetized toward the counter, as it moved in slowly again. Swoopes countered that move by gripping him by the back of his coat again. “So you talk to your family…’bout what happened?”

  Bricks’ low eyes appeared to widen at the mention of his relatives. “Yeah…I told them to be watching each other’s backs, because I don’t know what’s coming next.” A tear rolled down his face and he turned in the opposite direction, to prevent Swoopes from seeing it. “He was my brother. One of my best friends.” He looked straight ahead, at the liquor bottles on the mirrored shelf. “And I can’t count a time in my life, where he hadn’t been there for me.” He looked at Swoopes and honestly asked, “What I’ma do without my brother? What I’ma do without my man?”

  Swoopes looked down at his hands which were clasped together on the bar in front of him. “I know how you feel.”

  Bricks immediately shot him an evil look. “How you know what the fuck I feel like? You telling me you lost a brother?”

  “I’m tellin’ you I lost everybody.” Swoopes corrected him. “Anybody who was ever ‘spposed to love me.” He sipped his Corona to give his painful thoughts a break. Emotions were the devil. “I know what its like to lose somebody close. I ain’t a total monster, nigga.” He pointed at his face. “’Spite the eye patch.”

  Bricks lost his emotions again as he thought about Melvin. The worst sound in the world was a real man crying. Bricks tried to stop it, but lost the battle. In the end he allowed a cry that sounded as if it poured out of heaven and rolled from his soul to have voice. If somebody wanted to blame him for breaking down, fuck ‘em. “And you know the worst part about it,” he looked at Swoopes with bloodshot eyes, “my little man was ‘spposed to be wit’ him, but I sent him to stay in Atlanta with my comrade. I remember hating Melvin, like I never hated anybody else for making me do it too. I…I acted like he never did shit for me in my life,” he beat his chest, in an effort to relieve some of the pressure off his broken heart. “They killed him and it’s all my fault.”

  When Swoopes felt a burning sensation rush down the middle of his forehead and toward his nose, he knew he was choked up. The last thing he was going to do was cry with another nigga at a bar. “You think AFCOG was involved?” He asked, in the hopes of discussing anything else.

  “I’m not sure.” He wiped the tears off his face with this dirty palm. “You heard Rufus…he said he was up on all of us. So I wouldn’t be surprised.” He waved the bartender for another round. But because he already displayed enough man emotion for the night, which brought some of the customers down, he acted as if he didn’t see him. “If I were you, I’d call and check up on my people too.” Bricks tried to get the bartender’s attention again by way of hand flurries, but he was unsuccessful.

  “I told you earlier, man, I don’t have no people.” Swoopes said. “They gone, all of ‘em.”

  Silence.

  “When this shit is all said and done, what you gonna do? I mean, where are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know, Bricks.” He shrugged. “Shit been so fucked up for me, that I can’t see that far into the future.” He asked for another beer and a shot, while the bartender was in the serving mood. “When I was younger, I use to dream all the time. I use to wish I could be a surgeon, or a movie star.” Swoopes smiled although he rarely did. “I just knew I was gonna be this big time person, but somebody snatched that dream from me.” When he remembered all of them men who raped him in his life, he felt a blinding rage. When he got like this, he felt like hurting somebody. Anybody. With his switch on lunatic mode, he looked around the bar to find one person who was looking at him sideways. Shit, he’d even take the dude who was about to rob Bricks on his way back into the bar. He found nothing. No one. His mind was still flickering until Bricks’ comment brought him back to reality.

  “A doctor?” He laughed. “What makes you think somebody would let you operate on ‘em?

  “Why is that so fucking funny? I said it was a dream.” Drunk or not Bricks was pushing limits.

  “Not for nothing, but I can’t see you being a doctor. Or no actor for that matter.” He tried to get the bartender’s attention again and again it was ignored. “You ain’t fit to be nothin’ but the street nigga you aspired to be. Live with it.”

  “Good thing I don’t give a fuck about what you think, drunk.” He smirked. “Niggas love kicking down dreamers. That’s why so many niggas on some other shit. Can’t get no support from their own people. Blacks!” He shook his head.

  Bricks thought about what he said and felt the truth in his statement. “Look, I ain’t mean that shit. For real, I probably don’t make the best company right now. Maybe I should just be by myself.”

  “Naw…I’m hanging right here. Plus if somebody went after your brother, what’s to stop them from coming after you too? Somebody gotta watch your ass.”

  “So you my bodyguard now?” He smirked, as he tried to mean mug him from top to bottom. But when his eyes came dangerously close to shutting for a drunk nap, he sprung them open. “Not for nothing, but I think I can take care of myself.”

  He looked at him and laughed. “I’m not saying you can’t, moe. I’m just saying I’m staying right here.”

 
; Bricks didn’t want to let him know, but for some reason, he appreciated the company from his adversary. “Why are you still here, man?”

  “I just told you. Stop asking stupid shit.”

  “Naw. I’m talking about with Yvonna…and all of this shit she got going on?”

  “Sometimes I think you don’t hear nobody but yourself.”

  “That’s not even true.”

  “I’m serious. I told you before we got history with this AFCOG shit. And when the bitch Gabriella, gave Rufus my name in Vegas, I knew I couldn’t go back to my old life anyway, not that it was much of a life. He knew I was alive and he probably didn’t know how much I remembered.” He sipped his beer. “Plus I deserve revenge for what they put me through just like she do.”

  “So you never think about everything she did to you?” Bricks continued. “You never think about getting back at her?”

  “I use to. As a matter of fact, before the situation at Ron Max’s house with the YBM, I couldn’t say if I trusted her or not.”

  “And now?”

  He placed his half full beer on the counter. “And now I realize she’s the only one I can trust. We alike in a lot of ways. And at least with Yvonna, you know where she’s coming from.”

  “Sometimes.” Bricks said, remembering their last fight.

  “What you mean?”

  He swallowed. “How you feel ‘bout her talking to herself?”

  Swoopes was just about to respond, when three dudes walked into the bar. Two of the three looked identical and the third favored them also but was younger. Since Swoopes had interaction with all three at some point, he recognized them immediately. “Look, we got company that we probably need to avoid. Now I’m gonna slide out first and if you want, you can follow me. Either way I’m gone.”

  “Who the fuck are they?” Bricks maneuvered his neck four times trying to recognize a face. He saw no one and true to Swoopes’ word, he vanished.