In This Life

by Leo Sullivan

  As they headed for the door his mind reminded him of the white van and the two white men. As soon as the door opened he instantly regretted it. There stood J.J. and Dirty Red blocking the walkway where they had to pass. For a brief moment everything seemed to move in slow, surrealistic motion. Freddy’s mind sagely made a quick assessment as he stepped out on the sidewalk, the sun bright in his face.

  “Don’t show any fear,” his mind screamed at him! “Need more space…more space…more space…” His eyes blazing like a trapped animal, Freddy prepared to fight his way out. He established visual contact with J.J. He was the real threat. He felt Sasha squeeze his hand and he heard her frantic whispers behind him. “Freddy, please! Please don’t fight. Take me home.” As sure as he held her delicate hand, he knew that it was going to be a long walk home.

  J.J.’s real name was James Jackson. His swarthy dark skin was almost luminous. It shined blue black. A thick ugly scar, curved like a horseshoe ran down the bridge of his wide nose, and one of his front teeth was missing, giving him a menacing snarl when he smiled. He wore his hair matted and nappy. At nineteen years old, pure brute force and ruthlessness, J.J. was built like a gorilla. Some said he looked like one. Years of institution life had fortified his body. His partner Dirty Red was the complete opposite. Suave and debonair with his near white complexion and long locks of curly hair. He was like catnip to women. He once had a crush on Sasha. In fact, one could even call it an infatuation and for the life of him he could not understand what she saw in young ass Freddy. He had always tried to talk to her and always she politely turned him down. Bitterly, he decided that she was a stuck up broad, and one-day she would come running after him just like the rest of them. Dirty Red was trouble, and the two of them made a hell of a team. A tantamount team designed to wreak havoc. And together they did just that. A duo feared by most, respected by few, and loved by none. They prided themselves on mayhem and terror.

  Freddy didn’t have a choice. In one quick motion he lunged forward, pulling Sasha with him. She almost stumbled and fell as Freddy bumped into both men as he made a clearance. Now out in the open, he pushed Sasha and mumbled for her to go home. J.J. started to laugh, but actually he was surprised by the move that Freddy had just made.

  “Coward ass nigga, if I thought you had a heart I would beat your punk ass right in front of your bitch!”

  Dirty Red cracked in, “Damn! Sasha, that ass looks like it’s getting fatter. You need a man, not a boy!” He pointed at Freddy.

  Sasha started pulling Freddy’s arm, pleading with him to go. “Both y’all niggaz act like bitches. Tell me who’s fucking who? The gorilla or the Red dick’n’the booty ass nigga?”

  That was it, J.J. was fuming. His face turned a pale blue black. No one had ever had the nerve to call him that to his face. Freddy had struck a nerve. J.J. stepped forward; Freddy braced himself in a fighting stance. Sasha rushed between the two of them, her ponytail swinging. “Please, y’all don’t start fighting,” she pleaded. In the commotion Dirty Red crept up behind her and violently shoved her to the ground. J.J. then began swinging wildly. Freddy back paddled on the balls of his feet while Dirty Red smiled mischievously as Sasha was lying on the ground. A trickle of blood ran from her mouth as J.J. was still trying to pulverize Freddy by raining punches at him. They all missed. Freddy’s main concern was for Sasha as he continued to dodge and weave, while constantly trying to glance in Sasha’s direction. The way he now stood over her with a malicious scowl on his face, Dirty Red looked as if he might kick her. Then he turned his attention to the fight.

  Somewhere in the distance a lone gunman held a high-powered rifle with the scope pointed at the melee. His hundred thousand dollar bounty was at stake. On this early morning he would be the only audience other than the birds that sat perched on the telephone wires, and now he was excited. Those black boys sure knew how to throw down! And that was when he noticed the pretty girl sneaking up behind one of the unsuspecting men…damn! The gunman roared with laughter. Sitting his gun down, he started to applaud them by banging his hand on the steering wheel.

  Freddy again glanced in Sasha’s direction, only this time it cost him. He was clobbered with a wild right that sent him staggering backwards. J.J. then rushed in to finish him off. The next blow caught him in the midsection. It bent Freddy over. J.J. brought his knee up to smash his face and barely missed as Freddy was able to duck…”POW!” The tempest sound of glass crashing against flesh and bone echoed an eerie sound. Momentarily both fighters stopped.

  Sasha was now standing over Dirty Red. He was bent over holding his head, blood streaming from the side of his head. Sasha was holding the partial neck of the Coke bottle that she had just hit him in the head with. She then threw the piece of glass at J.J. Both fighters now looked at her befuddled. At the same exact moment both men were thinking the same thing, “Knock the hell out of him.” Only the decision went in Freddy’s favor. In the split second that it took J.J. to dodge the glass, Freddy swung a punch all the way back from Mississippi and rocked him, just like his dad used to tell him to do. He then yelled at Sasha, “Go home! Go home!” With her lip bleeding she was not having any of it as she maniacally searched the ground for something else to throw at J.J. Now she was fired up and fully intent on helping her man. “Sasha, take your ass home girl!” J.J. was now swinging like a wild man and Freddy continued glancing at her, nearly getting hit. She thought if she could just get Freddy to turn J.J. to the right she could jump on his back. “Sasha, go ho…” She grimaced as J.J. hit Freddy so hard it looked like he knocked a patch of hair out of his head. No…no it was the skin off his forehead, and he now appeared to be dazed and hurt. She thought J.J. was going to surely kill her baby. If she stood there, it was no way that he would defend himself effectively. Suddenly she abandoned her thoughts and took off running down the street. Sasha Thomas had another idea.

  J.J. now had his mind on stalking Freddy and setting his little ass up for the one big punch. Freddy knew that if he had any chance of beating him, he had to out maneuver him in order to out box him. J.J. swung a left and then a right. Freddy felt the wind velocity of each punch--as they barely missed his face. He sized him up, realizing if J.J. grabbed him the fight would be over. He had to somehow keep his distance. J.J. moved in and attempted to grab Freddy. Just in a nick of time he was able to side step him and use his momentum and force to ram his body into the gates of the store window. The window bars rattled loudly, reverberating with each contact of metal and flesh. The birds made a swift exit to their sanctuary in the sky as J.J. bounced off the bars and was met with a vicious kick that sent him backwards. Somehow he was able to keep his balance. Shock now registered on his face. This was going to be a lot more difficult than he had anticipated. They now faced each other, fatigued and weary. Their bodies hunched over as they both breathed heavily, like two old warriors. A trickle of blood ran from J.J.’s nose. As Freddy now studied his body language, he noticed how tentative J.J. now moved as he kept shaking his head. Freddy realized that J.J. was hurt. He knew then that he could take him. So, he moved in aggressively and faked with a left and swung all the way from New York with an overhand right, walloping him good in the chin. That pretty much knocked all the fight out of him. Now J.J. was taking steps backwards, strangely his eyebrows bounced in recognition of something. Instantly Freddy knew something was terribly wrong. It then dawned on him too late. J.J. had a mischievous smirk on his face. Just as Freddy turned his head, POWW! The sound was deafening, at least to Freddy’s ears, and the sun turned dim, almost dark. Only the stars that he was now seeing were bright, his ears rung. Somehow in the abyss of confusion he realized that he had been hit upside the head with an object, perhaps a baseball bat or a tire iron he wondered as he fell to one knee. He felt the warm sensation of his own blood tingling, cascading down his neck, soaking his shirt, staining it crimson red.

  “Naw punk! Naw-muthufuka! What you gonna do now?” Dirty Red said from behind him. Blurry eyed, Freddy tried t
o turn his head in his direction. J.J. then rendered him a crushing blow, kicking him in the face. The kick slammed him on his back. He was lying there sapped of all his strength. He then felt a torrent of blows battering his body. At first he tried to fight back, but it was useless. His attackers had more opportunities to get in clean punches, so as best he could he tried to ball up into a fetal position. It was useless and the blows were doing a lot of damage. He was losing consciousness as his blood spilled on the worn out concrete. Faintly he tried to struggle with his attackers as he heard a voice, somewhere in the depths of his mind, willing him…calling him…telling him to “get up son.” Sadly, he recognized the voice of his dead father as his world now strobed around darkness, an aura of death beckoning him to follow the light at the end of the tunnel. J.J. reached down and pulled him up by his blood soaked shirt, his face just inches form his. “Lets see how Sasha likes your pretty ass now.” He then spit in his face. Saliva mingled with blood now smeared Freddy’s face. As he released him his head thumped on the concrete. Dirty Red struggled to pick up a big steel drum garbage can. Finally he held it over his head. “That bitch hit me…,” he staggered under the weight of the garbage can, “but I got your ass!” He then slammed the can down on Freddy’s chest. Freddy groaned as the thin bones in his lower extremities gave way. J.J.’s tooth missing scowl turned into a feral smile. He enjoyed seeing Freddy suffer and he enjoyed even more the creativeness of his partner. He then reached into his sock. Everything seemed to now move in super slow motion as he pulled out a knife. A tremulous glare shined off the gleaming serrates of death. As the knife flashed through the air, Freddy flinched. J.J. then plunged it into his chest. Dirty Red then began to hoop and holler and frantically jump up and down holding his wounded head. “Stick’em! Stick’em! Stick his ass again!” This time J.J. studied the knife with his lip curled in purposeful consternation. He grabbed Freddy up by the hair and snapped his neck back to expose the soft tissue of the flesh where he now planned to enter the knife.

  A large U-Haul truck had pulled up in front of Mario blocking his view. Now he was furious because he could not see what the fuck was going on. The last he had seen, the kid was getting the shit kicked out of him after the one boy had hit him with an object of some kind. Mario had come up with a better idea. Let the two boys beat the hell out of Freddy and he would just act as a Good Samaritan and rescue the boy by befriending him. But now he could not see what the hell was going on. The U-Haul truck moved and to Mario’s horror he saw that one of the boys had a knife about to stab his one hundred thousand-dollar bounty. “Oh shit!” He quickly picked up the rifle and at the exact same time Sasha came running with two men. One of them had a gun pointing in the direction of the fight. Then as if on cue, just as J.J. was about to come down with the knife, a fusillade of shots rang out shattering the lull of death’s coup de grace. J.J. looked up and dropped the knife. Freddy somehow managed to turn his head slightly to see his best friends running towards him, guns blazing. Then he heard the sounds of his would be assassins fleeing. A partial smile creased his swollen bloodied lips.

  Sasha, seeing him lying on the ground in a puddle of blood, ran towards him. When she reached him she dropped to her knees and cradled his head to her bosom, “Pleeeez! Lord! Nooooo!” She wailed.

  Mario sat in the van, knuckles white as he tightly gripped the steering wheel. Even from the distance he could hear the shrieks of the black girl as she cried holding the lifeless body of Freddy Thugstin. This microcosm of the world was foreign to him and for the first time in his long career as he watched the girl’s rhythmic body now swayed to the sobs of her dirge to the lifeless body that she now clung to. He swallowed the lump in his throat as a crowd was beginning to form. The sound of sirens blared in his ears. It seemed to snap him back to his senses. Murdering two people in one day was enough to make a man hungry. He then drove off.

  Chapter Three

  Provident hospital is historically one of the oldest black owned hospitals in America. The prestigious Dr. Benjamin Powell, it’s founder, pioneered one of the first open heart surgeries in 1938. The hospital is located on the south side of Chicago, on 51st and King Drive. It is reminisce of the black renaissance, an epoch in time that was celebrated by socioeconomic prosperity. Today the hospital teeters on the precipice of foreclosure.

  Inside in a hermetic room, white on white eggshell colored walls, a bright light sheaths the patient; Freddy Thugstin’s condition was worsening. A pretty nurse, in a uniform a size too small, stands over him gently stroking his forehead, at least the part that was in a gauze bandage. Unexpectedly his eyes fluttered until one eyelid successfully opened. A light bulb, too damned bright, hurts his brain. The room was a cloudy haze of piercing bright lights and floating bodies. A tube ran down his throat, an I.V. of antibiotic dangled from his arm, a catheter in his penis. The doctor had found no fractures in the lateral x-ray of his neck. All the neurological tests of his brain were negative.

  “Doctor the patient is showing signs of consciousness,” the nurse reported. She then carefully examined his I.V. fluids in his arm. Dr. Utumo, an affable man with graying wisp of hair at the temples, sad baggy eyes, and a thick shaggy mustache, stared down at the patient, shaking his head at the sight of the body. He fought to keep his composure. After all of the pain and suffering that he had been exposed to in his native land of South Africa, to come to America, the so called home of the brave and land of the free, the place for so called democracy, and see such an atrocity was unthinkable. As he now stared at the battered and bludgeoned face, it once again confirmed his fears; Black people all over the planet were being slaughtered. Only in America, black men had been taught to hate themselves. In his homeland they fight oppression in the form of apartheid. In America black on black crime was fueled by poor economics, the result of a constant struggle to gain access to a better way of life.

  “Do not attempt to speak Mr. Thugstin. I know that you are in a great deal of pain. I found it amazing that only a year or so ago I treated you in this same exact room for a gunshot. You barely escaped paralysis at that time.” The doctor’s lower lip started to tremble as he continued to speak, “Sometimes I wish that I had chose another line of work. To see my own people kill each other and then have the nerve to blame it on the white man. We are now our own worst enemy.” He then shrugged his shoulders and took out his ophthalmoscope and shined it into both of Freddy’s eyes. The pupils were responsive.

  “I will give you a brief explanation of your condition. I will also explain why I must perform emergency surgery as soon as possible. You have four broken ribs. One is dangerously pressing against the working lung that you have left. Your other lung was punctured when you were stabbed. It has collapsed and each time you breathe, air fills the inside of your chest cavity, making it almost impossible for the surviving lung to operate sufficiently. The mounting air pressure must be released and the punctured lung re-examined. Most importantly, you are hemorrhaging. I don’t have time to mention all of the lacerations, nor the thirty-eight stitches in your head.” The doctor then stopped and fatiguely exhaled, “…and there are two very angry cops out in the hallway. They want to talk to you about a murder. Do you want to talk to them?” Freddy shook his head no. “I did not think so,” the doctor responded. “I may need a legal guardian to sign the forms, however, since we have been through this before, we both know it is a complete waste of both our time. For the record this is an emergency. Nurse Jones will be one of my assistance in the operating room.” Freddy looked in her direction. She had her hands on her wide hips and waved at him, displaying a beautiful ivory smile with perfectly even teeth. Freddy fell back into unconsciousness.

  The next day he awoke he was in a cold damp room covered with a thin sheet. His teeth chattered and his body began to shiver. People skulked in white masks and latex gloves stood over him. A familiar voice admonished, “Mr. Thugstin, I want you to count backwards, starting from one hundred.”

  “One hundred…ninety ni
ne…?” Freddy awoke ten hours later. The pain he felt was excruciating. The tube was no longer in his mouth. The one that was in his nose hurt worst. An obese nurse with a retrousse expression and a blonde pompadour scared the hell out of him when he regained consciousness. To this right, episodic beeps chimed from a machine that displayed animated wavy lines. He coughed and pain ricocheted throughout his perforated body that was now being held together with over two hundred sutures, staples, and pins. From the top of his chest past his navel, the scalpel made an ugly jigsaw cut that would be with him the rest of his life. He felt like he had been gutted and put back together again. The operation hurt worse than the beating.

  “My name is Mrs. Weinberger,” said the nurse.

  “Hurt…bad.” Freddy crooned through a dry mouth and sandpaper tongue. She rolled her eyes and smacked her lips loudly.

  “Listen, I am here to administer a shot. Don’t you dare come in here complaining that you hurt.” Then her pudgy eyes blinked, “Heeey! I know you from some place.” She then peered down at him. “Where do I know you from? You one of them gang bangers? A while back someone snatched my purse.” She then took a closer look at him. He could see the broken veins under her eyes, as well as the caked up makeup she wore on her face. She then pulled out a syringe and tried to hide it behind her back. Freddy had seen it, and it looked to be the size of an elephant tranquilizer. He thought he heard her mumbling something about gangbanger and purse. His eyes bulged and he tried to ease away from her.