by Scott Frank
“I’m thinking maybe we need something worse,” he was saying. “Burn it all down. Start over.”
Truck had to ask, “What happens we all burn down with it?”
“Nah, fool, we’d be the survivors.” He took the blunt from Truck, had his own hit, then went on as he let out a huge cloud of smoke. “Sure, we’d have drought and starvation for a couple years. Prolly more than that. But pretty soon, new shit gonna grow. New people gonna have they shot.”
“Why you wanna start over?”
“ ’Cause what we got now is bullshit. Fuck all these drunk OGs think they all down rappin’ about smokin’ and drinkin’. The idea of working for your set, that all gone now. It all about being famous. Not like once upon a time. You were a ghetto star because you worked.”
Truck wasn’t so sure about that. He worked plenty and, yet, here he was.
“I been readin’ this book by that dude Monster Kody,” Science was now saying, “Eight Trey Crip from back in the day, you know who I’m talking about? Now that dude was the real truth. Fuckin’ Eight Treys, man, they one time go to a Blood funeral and steal the fuckin’ body right out of the box so they can kill it again. They stab it in the face a buncha times, then go dump it back in Blood Hood. That’s hard core.” He passed the blunt back to Truck and said, “Dude, you gotta read this book.”
Truck said, “I don’t read no history books,” ignoring the offered smoke. The truth was Truck didn’t read anything. He was illiterate. He’d spent the last six years sleeping on floors or in the backs of parked cars. In all that time, he never once set foot in a school. His mom died from an OD. He had a grandmother, but the last time he saw her, she was going the same way. He had a brother that got killed—stabbed in a movie theater over some long forgotten beef.
Truck never thought much about any of this. He didn’t care about starting over or creating a new, more powerful set or any of the shit Science went on about. For him, shit just happened. A blade or a bullet didn’t have any kind of higher purpose outside of killing whoever had the misfortune of getting in front of it. A bullet had no name on it, it hit whatever or whoever it hit. To Truck, everything was random. Chance. He shot someone, stole something, did whatever he did not so much to defend himself or take a life, but to see what would happen next. That’s all. He couldn’t read. Some said he couldn’t even learn. But he could for sure make shit happen.
And right now what was happening was Mr. Freeze had just come out of his room and was coming down the steps, slowly, in no big hurry.
Science saw him, too, watched him cross the now dark parking lot and start walking up Laurel Canyon, and said what Truck already knew: “It’s on.”
They kept a full block behind him. They figured that he knew they were there, between the street lights and the traffic, the sidewalk was lit up like it was mid-afternoon. Both boys were strapped, Truck with a silver .45 he called his “Forty-five Homeboys” and Science with that Walther. He had Googled the gun that morning and learned that it was German and older than his mom. He decided from then on, he’d go nowhere, he wasn’t strapped. And this funky old piece with the hair trigger would be his strap of choice. No one would take it from him. Not ever.
Mr. Freeze stayed on Laurel Canyon for a good half mile before turning right onto Sherman Way, but when they got to the corner, no more than twenty seconds later, the man was gone. Science looked across the street. He wasn’t there either.
“Where he at?”
They reached under their shirts, put a hand on their guns and continued cautiously up the street, looking inside storefronts and doorways. They looked in between buildings and around parked cars until finally Truck said, “Cuz, you know why we can’t find this fool?”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause the mothafucka’s right behind us.”
Science turned and saw that it was true: somehow Mr. Freeze was now following them.
He kept on walking, but what Science really wanted to do was sit down on the curb and think. Or they could just run. No way this dude could catch them, not after being shot a bunch of times. Science was about to suggest this very option when Truck looked back and said, “No big thing.” He kept looking back at the man following them and said, “Let him come along.” He then turned to Science and smiled. “We’ll take him to Radford,” he said. “Be some niggas there fo’ sure.”
—
Roy waited for the two of them to figure out that he was now a half block behind them. He was certain that it would be the smart one, Science, who caught on first. But it was the killer, Truck, who turned and looked back. Roy should have known. Science had the brains, but Truck had the gut. He probably felt Roy before he saw him. Same as Roy would have felt him.
He figured they were now leading him to some nearby neighborhood where they would have an advantage. That was fine with Roy as there was a good chance that it would be somewhere close to home, so that, afterward, if he had to, Roy could stop by Science’s house.
They turned off the main boulevard and the street suddenly became darker. Roy looked up and saw that all of the streetlights on this block had been shot out. The two boys had stopped walking and Roy realized that they had led him into a cul-de-sac, faded two-story apartment buildings all around, but no houses on this street.
Some lights were on. The blue glow of TVs flickering in many of the windows. Here and there people were out on the street, but Roy couldn’t make out any details at this hour. The two boys were now standing near the end of the street. A couple of bigger kids got out of a car and stood beside them.
Science waved.
“Hey, Mr. Freeze,” he said. “Come here and let us holler at you real quick.”
—
They watched him come. Science could feel Cisco and Taco, the two OGs standing on either side of him. Twin brothers, the only way to tell them apart was Taco shaved his head while Cisco favored long dreads. Both were over six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds. And right now both were also sky up and bent out of their fucking minds. Science had smelled the dope as soon as they got out of the car. When he ran the set, that shit would stop. A sober and disciplined set would be undeniable.
“You two shoulda come to me straight up,” Cisco was saying. “Instead you run off and hide while you all over CNN.”
Science said, “I ain’t hidin’ from shit.” He watched Mr. Freeze and put a hand on his gun. “I been lookin’ for this fool.”
“What you doin’ over on Dehougne anyway?”
Science said, “We claimin’ Vineland now.”
“Since when?”
“Since I claimed it.”
Cisco looked at him.
Science shrugged and said, “Tiny Locos are weak.”
The two giant brothers laughed hard at that one. Cisco smacked Science on the back of the head, all the while watching Mr. Freeze make his way up the block. “I remember yo’ li’l ass use to ride skateboards and them BMX bikes, actin’ crazy an’ shit. Now you want to be a gangster, huh? You wanna hang with real mothafuckas and tear shit up?”
“I am a gangster.”
“You trippin’ is what you doin’, bringin’ a mothafucka like him down here.”
“I’m on it.”
“You better be, loc,” Cisco said. “You better blow up this fool right now. ’Cause any homies come up dead behind this, me an’ bro gonna fuckin’ stomp yo’ stupid ass, drop you naked in Blood Hood somewhere.”
Science took out the Walther. “He’s good as got.”
Taco looked at the gun and laughed, “Where’d you get the antique, homie?”
Science looked off toward Roy. “From him.”
—
Before he left, Roy had swallowed a couple more pain pills and was feeling pretty good right about now. Of course, he would feel better if he had a gun, but he was pretty sure there would be someone down there at the end of the block who would have one he could borrow. And wouldn’t you know it, at that very moment, as Roy got within fifty fe
et of the group, one of the big homeboys reached into the back of a car and came out with a sawed-off, pistol-gripped pump.
Roy could make out people in clusters standing around the apartment buildings. Too dark to really see them, but Roy heard children’s voices and saw a couple of strollers, a few people in lawn chairs, everyone outside enjoying the fresh air, free for a moment from rooms that wouldn’t stop shaking.
Roy knew the wide spray from that chopped shotgun could easily hit a dozen of them in any direction.
As Roy got closer, the one holding it concentrated on his hardcore stare, but Roy could see, even in the dark, that, big and fat as he was, he was strictly a gunfighter and wouldn’t have much skill with his hands. The other one had a black Glock at his side, was absently rubbing his leg with it while the two younger kids stood directly in front of them, each with a hand under his shirt trying to look bored.
Roy was surprised, now stepping right up to the group, that the two big boys were twins, identical in every way except for their hair, and both clearly stoned out of their minds, tiny red embers where their eyes were supposed to be.
Roy raised his hands to his shoulders and said, “I’m unarmed,” and then rabbit-punched Truck in the face, the blow shocking everyone standing there, especially Truck, who jerked upright and grabbed his face with both hands, making it that much easier for Roy to take hold of his Forty-five Homeboys and shoot the fat one behind him holding the sawed-off, the guy looking down at the blooming red flower on his white T-shirt, before backing away a couple of steps and then collapsing.
Standing this close, Roy had everybody jammed up, so his twin brother couldn’t get that Glock high enough before Roy shot him just above the lip, covering Science, who was standing right in front of him, with pieces of his cratered face.
Panicked, Science fired once into the sidewalk, the damned Walther going off early, and was raising it again when Roy reached out and grabbed it by the barrel with his free hand and took it away. Science froze, just stood there looking back at him, waiting for whatever was coming next. All of a sudden, Roy wasn’t exactly sure himself, so he hit the kid in the head with Truck’s .45 so he could think about it, the kid going down on the sidewalk. Roy tossed that pistol aside, quickly jacked the clip on his Walther, happy to have the old gun once again nestled in his hand, and saw that he had a few rounds left.
Did he kill these two? They knew what he was. But he now had the gun, so there was no way they could prove it had come from him. Maybe it was time to just go.
He looked up to see Truck stumbling through the dark to where Roy had tossed the .45 on the grass.
“Leave it.”
But either the kid didn’t hear or didn’t care and picked up his gun and spun around when Roy shot him twice.
Roy turned and put his gun on Science, the kid now picking himself up off the sidewalk and facing Roy.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Ain’t nobody care about me and I don’t care about nobody on this earth.”
Roy pulled the trigger, but somehow knew before he heard it that there would be a click, but no gunshot.
Science didn’t even blink at the sound. He just asked, “You wanna go again?”
Roy thought about it, but then looked at the apartment building behind the kid. Every window seemed to contain a little blue flame, all the same rectangular shape. He looked around at the other windows and down on the street, a hundred flaming rectangles all around him.
Tonight, it seemed, everybody had their phone out.
It didn’t really matter what Roy did next. There was nowhere for him to go.
“Why you trippin’, cuz?” Science said. “Ain’t you a killer?”
Roy looked at the kid, but had no idea what to say.
The county held Roy for less than six weeks at the Wyandotte Detention Center. There was no trial as the young ADA assigned to the case took one look at the shivering twelve-year-old and suddenly had no taste for a public fight, agreeing with the boy’s flaky-scalped lawyer, Doc Solomon, that this was essentially a mercy killing and, so, made a quick deal for manslaughter—a two- or three-year jolt at the most for, as the ADA described him, “an otherwise decent kid like this one.”
Upon entering his plea, sealed because of his age, Roy was transferred to the Missouri State Training School for Boys at Boonville, or the Honor Center as it was somewhat ironically called before it was shut down by the state barely a month after Roy’s release, and almost one hundred years to the day after it had opened.
A nearly obese fifteen-year-old with thick sandy hair, and what Roy thought were the long lashes and round brown eyes of a woman, was the only other prisoner on the bus to Boonville. He introduced himself as Jerome (“call me Jerry”) Wethers, and assured Roy that he himself would show Roy the ropes once they got “up the hill.” This kind gesture would turn out to be hollow since Jerry would be dead within a month of Roy’s arrival at Boonville.
Roy would come to wish for a similar end shortly thereafter.
In an effort to keep calm, Roy told himself that he was riding on a normal yellow school bus. This wasn’t all that difficult as there were no markings or bars on the windows. The only hint that this particular bus was bound for someplace other than a Missouri middle school was the curly-haired, seriously muscle-bound gentleman with the twelve-gauge sitting behind the driver. Darryl Deems—or Smiley, as the guard was called, because he was always grinning, though he never looked particularly happy—faced the back and eyeballed Roy for the entire ninety-minute ride.
When the bus began making its way through gently rolling hills and lush orchards, Roy started to relax. He thought that maybe his mother was right, that maybe everything would be okay after all. But a few minutes later, as the bus rounded a corner and Roy saw the long row of stark white headstones at the bottom of the hill, and then his first glimpse of the main building at the top, he immediately had trouble breathing. He pressed his face to the glass and stared up at the gothic brick and stone pile, the place looking something like a cross between a Southern military college and an insane asylum, and knew in that instant that nothing would be okay ever again.
—
Boonville held “unsettled juveniles” convicted of everything from petty larceny to rape all the way up the felony ladder to murder. There was no segregation of any kind; inmates were mixed indiscriminately. The younger with the older, the dangerous mental cases with the normal delinquent, the first-time offender with the hardened hoodlum. This was the murky, blackwater pool that the perpetually frightened kid from Kansas City was chucked into.
“You’re in for Man One?”
That’s what the processing guards kept asking as Roy undressed, all of them laughing at his pinched face, bony arms, and the trembling pale sticks he stood on, none of them believing that he could kill anything, let alone his own father.
The rough strip search left him bleeding in a couple of embarrassing places and Roy nearly fainted twice. The small, windowless room heated up to near ninety degrees didn’t help. Each time Roy felt himself going, he caught Deems smiling at him from the back of the room and something told him to stay awake at all costs.
For the next two years if he could.
He fought the urge to piss down his leg and stared straight ahead like a good soldier until one of the guards tossed him a gray uniform and told him to get dressed.
Deems marched Roy, now balancing a foam pillow atop a fitted sheet and folded wool blanket, past a group of a dozen boys weeding an acre of vegetables. The gardeners ranged in age from ten to seventeen and were covered in mud, the ground still soaked from a storm the day before. One of them, a six-foot-tall white blond, nearly albino, leaned on his hoe and smiled at Roy.
“Hey, fish,” he said. “Welcome to Boonville.”
“Shut the fuck up, Knott,” Deems said without turning.
Roy kept his eyes forward, but could feel them all now pausing in their work to watch him pass. He had that old, familiar sensation that someone was
about to hit him or spit on him. Only now, his skin was suddenly alive, like someone was breathing on him. One touch would launch him out of his shoes.
He would have to somehow hide. Become invisible. That would be the only way he would survive this place. Stay out of everyone’s way. Don’t piss anyone off. Find those places where everyone isn’t and live there. He had done that in school, he would do that here.
Unfortunately, just as he arrived at this conclusion, the pillow he carried slid off the blanket and fell to the muddy ground. Roy hadn’t been paying attention and had let the blanket dip and the pillow dropped right in front of him, causing him to then trip over it.
Roy kept his feet, but that didn’t matter.
They all saw it.
One or two of the younger ones laughed, but the others, the older kids, leaning on their garden tools, just looked at him. And waited.
Roy froze, too afraid to do anything, was staring at the muddy footprint now stamped onto the pillow when Deems realized that Roy was no longer alongside him, turned around and saw the pillow lying in the dirt.
“You gonna pick that up?”
“Yes.”
“Well, do it,” Deems said. “Move.”
Roy stepped on the pillow. He hadn’t really meant to, his leg was just the first part of his body that moved.
He looked up at the guard, was all set to apologize when Deems slapped him across the face, slapped him so hard Roy now dropped the blanket and sheet as his legs folded up and he sat down in the mud.
“Pick it all up.”
Roy’s left ear was ringing and he didn’t hear the instruction.
Deems kicked him in the arm and said, again, “Pick it all up.”
Roy heard him that time and, his shoulder screaming in pain, gathered up the now muddy bedclothes and turned around just as Deems grabbed Roy’s chin with one hand and squeezed his jaw. Roy smelled beets as the guard bent down to get in Roy’s face and said, “For long as you’re here, none of that shit ever goes to the laundry. You got me? You sleep on it, filthy, just like it is.”
