A CHANGE OF HEART: Book 1 of the Hartford Series

by Jermaine Watkins

  There were still a lot of important things about the streets that he had to show Tracie. When he used to roll alone, there had been many boys who asked to join him, because he was not only street-wise but also one of the best fighters on Hexter Street. But all of them were followers and desperately wanted to be led. They had no minds of their own, unlike Tracie, who had impressed Little Man from day one. Tracie was his own leader, with his own opinions of life and people.

  It was his greatest pleasure, taking Tracie around the ’hood and revealing the same exciting sights that Little Man had discovered alone a few years ago, after his mother had died and he came to live on Hexter Street. Possessed by rage over her early death, Little Man had thrust his young life out into the dangerous streets and beat down anyone who got in his way. He had explained all of this to Tracie at some point in their friendship.

  “Let’s get out of here. I want to show you somethin’ different tonight,” Little Man said, pulling Tracie away from Mail Man, whose bad news nearly derailed the perfect plans that he had for tonight.

  Tracie followed Little Man down to the corner of Hexter Street, where they turned left onto Main. Little Man chose to remain silent, for Tracie would need a chance to clear his mind from the bad news about Bizz. He wanted everything to be perfect when he showed Tracie “somethin’ different,” which to him was the most important thing to learn about the streets.

  “I don’t want no beef with Bizz,” Tracie said, breaking their silence. His hands were inside his pockets, his shoulders drawn up, as he stared down at his sneakers. It was similar to his pose standing in his Nana’s kitchen only a half-hour ago. A little part of him wished that he was still with her, listening to her caring words, instead of being in such a rush to come outside, which was becoming a dangerous place to be.

  “Fuck Bizz. He just mad ’cause he want in the game, in the business. And he needs someone who knows the ropes—me. But I’m ’bout to show you the butter shit, the thing Bizz really wants from me.”

  Pocketing the remains of their purchased junk food, they continued walking. Just three city blocks away from Hexter Street, they found themselves in a ghetto neighborhood similar to their own, but this one had large, ramshackle houses lining the street instead of housing project apartment buildings.

  At the sight of Little Man, teenage girls dressed in tank tops and close-fitting shorts stopped talking in groups to say hello.

  “What’s up, ladies!” Little Man shouted back. He also exchanged fist taps with several boys standing here and there along the busy sidewalks. But he did not stop walking, Tracie following closely in tow, until he reached a brown house at the center left side of the street.

  Little Man turned to Tracie. “We here. Now don’t say nothin’, I’ll do all the talkin’. Just listen and take notes.” And then, with a sly grin, he turned around and pressed the doorbell’s black button.

  “Yo, who down there?” a rough masculine voice yelled from a third-floor window.

  “Let me in, Luke. I’m down here lookin’ stupid lookin’ at this door,” Little Man yelled back.

  A minute later, the door was opened by Luke, a tall brown-skinned man who appeared to be in his late twenties. He wore a black jean vest and had tattoos of a bald eagle’s head and a full-bodied king cobra covering arms of hard, well-defined muscles. His eyes, which Little Man had always known to be dark and menacing, blinked nervously. Luke was perspiring, as if the nighttime temperature was 110 degrees.

  “You okay?” Little Man asked.

  Luke answered, “Yeah, everything’s cool. Just waitin’ for you to show. You got the shit?”

  “Why you askin’ a dumb-ass question like that? That’s why I came by, ain’t it?” Little Man shook his head as he pushed past Luke to enter a large porch. He turned and waved for Tracie to come with him.

  “Who he?” Luke thumbed back at Tracie.

  “He got a name. Ask him,” Little Man said.

  “I’m Tracie. Nice to meet you.” Tracie smiled, but he felt dumb for using such a formal introduction with a man who was obviously one of Hartford’s most notorious thugs. His self-made hard image was slowly chip-chipping away. First with the news that Bizz was threatening Little Man’s life, and ultimately his own, but more profoundly, with what his friend was revealing to him about the streets. This was nothing like hanging out, checking out the hottest honeys, playing competitive games of hoop, and tossing dice against curbs to win another boy’s money.

  It was somehow ominous, visiting the strange brown house with the black-screen windows that one could not see through, not to mention the yell of, “Yo, who down there?” before they were allowed in. Even more menacing was Luke, with his tattoos of deadly creatures, who made Tracie think there was something wrong about the whole scene.

  Little Man said, “Tray is with me. He’s goin’ be with me from now on. We goin’ be business partners.”

  “Whatever.” Luke shrugged, as if he could care less if Little Man and Tracie were partners in jumping off a bridge. And then he nodded for the boys to proceed up the stairs inside a dark hallway. He followed closely behind them up to his third floor apartment, whose living room was in striking contrast to the ghetto neighborhood just outside. Two sofas and a large chair, all covered in black leather, centered the room. Gray carpeting with flecks of black and gold stretched across the floor. The coffee and lamp tables were made of smooth black marble and trimmed with gold, and the walls along the sides of the room held paintings reflecting everyday black urban life. However, the most striking element was a black marble entertainment center that housed a large-screen television.

  “This goin’ be how we’ll be livin’, Tray.”

  “Let’s get on with the show,” Luke said, as he turned and walked out of the room, much calmer now than earlier.

  “So what you think, Tray? About what I had to show you. You been quiet for a while now.”

  Tracie shook his head. Again, he had a thought that there was something wrong about all this: Who would live in the ’hood if they had the money to afford what this cat, Luke, had in his apartment? He knew the answer to the question, but he wanted to hear it from Little Man’s mouth.

  “What’s this all about, Little Man?”

  “It’s ’bout makin’ the Benjamins—nothin’ but hundred dollar bills—lots and lots of ’em. It’s about havin’ nice clothes. It’s about havin’ a nice apartment, like this one we in.”

  “But you already got money and clothes,” Tracie replied curtly.

  “And how you think I got them? My Mom’s dead. And Uncle Clyde was just gettin’ by when he found out he had to take care of me—another mouth to feed. So I got out in the streets and learned how to take care myself. Although my uncle don’t like it, I got to live. I got to dress right, keep my haircut tight, and keep gettin’ that pussy. You like all that, don’t you? All the attention? I can tell it when we hang together. Them hoes be like, ‘Hi, Tracie,’ and you be all cheesin’ and shit. Think they don’t know what I do? Think they don’t think you do it too? And they will do anything for you ’cause of it. Stick with me. We goin’ take it to another level. We goin’ be rich, like Luke. That nigga rich as hell.”

  Again, Tracie shook his head. It was the worst disappointment that he had faced in his young life. The truth of it reached down into his bowels and squeezed until it hurt like hell. But the truth of his Nana’s words hurt most: She had known all along the kind of person that Little Man was—she probably became aware the moment in their childhood that he changed—and tried to warn Tracie. But he would never listen to her.

  Little Man asked, “You okay? You look bugged out. Like you sick and shit.”

  Before Tracie could voice his feelings of disappointment, Luke reentered the living room holding two large zipper-top plastic bags with fifty tiny bags of marijuana in each.

  Little Man withdrew a roll of $100 bills from his pants pocket and expertly counted off the price of the drugs. He unzipped his backpack and pushed the pla
stic bags down deep inside.

  “Let’s roll out,” he said, securing the backpack and gripping both straps. Tracie nodded somberly, then followed Little Man out of the apartment and down the stairs.

  When Little Man opened the hallway door, a uniformed police officer was standing there with a smug grin. In the background, appearing through the porch windows, bright flashes of blue and red lights pierced the dark summer night. Police cars were lined up and down the street.

  “Slowly remove that backpack and hand it over to me,” the police officer said, raising his hand to the gun at his side. “Slowly,” he repeated.

  “Luke,” Little Man yelled murderously, his voice echoing throughout the hallway. “You fuckin’ bitch! You ratted me out!”

  The police officer said, “Yes, but he didn’t say you had a partner. You’re both under arrest.”

  Little Man turned to look at his friend, but Tracie would not look back. Instead, he stood with his hands in his pockets, shoulders drawn up, as he stared down at his black-and-white sneakers.

  Later that night, Tracie returned home to freedom. With his one telephone call from the police station, he had reached his Nana, who answered crying. The police had already contacted her with the news of his arrest. When she arrived at the police station, she confirmed Tracie’s story to the arresting officer: Tracie had never sold illegal drugs.

  But the strongest evidence had come from Little Man, who was separated from Tracie immediately after they left the brown house in handcuffs. His friend had told the officer that Tracie did not sell drugs and he didn’t know where Little Man was taking him that night.

  “Still don’t believe me ’bout that boy?” Maggie asked, pointing across the kitchen table at Tracie, whose face was covered with his hands as he sobbed without end.

  She turned away to survey all the damage the police had done to her kitchen. Shortly after arresting Tracie, they had come to her home with a search warrant. No part of the apartment went untouched; everything was turned upside down and pulled out from drawers and shelves in their search for illegal drugs. It would take her an entire day to get each piece of furniture back into perfect place, return each can of food back to its proper shelf, and hang each article of clothing back on the closet racks. Some pieces of dishware and porcelain figurines were either shattered or so badly damaged that they were irreparable.

  “Look what those folks did to my home, Tracie. You look around and see what you caused them to do.” She was not crying; she was all cried out from the initial shock and upset of Tracie’s arrest. She was left with a hot, uncontrollable, un-Christian rage.

  She rose and walked over to Tracie’s side of the table. “I asked if you believe me ’bout that boy now?”

  “Yes, Nana.” His words were muffled from speaking into his shaking hands that were still cupped over his face. He was hurt and embarrassed at the disappointment of what Little Man had turned out to be. None of the attention from the other cool boys and pretty girls had ever been worth getting into trouble with the law.

  “I’ve learned my lesson,” he said.

  “Bet your life on that.”

  Maggie touched Tracie’s shoulder with her forefinger, and he looked nervously up at her with his puffy, wet face. “I said, bet your life on that. You goin’ clean your life back up, you hear? From now on, I want your fast butt back in church with a burnin’ gratitude to God for gettin’ you out this mess, ’cause you was on your way straight to some juvenile home. And I couldn’t done nothin’ about it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You bet, yes ma’am. And I want you to turn those filthy Fs into As on your report card. And no more calls ’bout absences from school—when that’s where your butt ought to be—and then back home you come.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You bet, yes ma’am. Now get up and let’s start cleanin’ up this mess!”

  Tracie gradually built his life back up, brick by brick, under the strict observance and guidance of his Nana. The hardest thing to do was to forget entirely about the brotherhood he had shared with Little Man, how they used to talk, wear their clothes like twins, and laugh until it cramped their young stomachs.

  In his first letter, which he wrote a week after the arrest, Little Man apologized for trying to involve Tracie in his business of selling drugs. He asked for Tracie to also apologize to his Nana, who had been right to worry over their continued friendship, which could have only landed him in a juvenile home with Little Man.

  The arrival of Little Man’s second letter presented a graphic description of life in the home. He expressed how much he missed his freedom, asking about the neighborhood and the personal status of his girlfriends.

  Tracie found the letters so depressing that he was unable to open any of the others he received thereafter. About the experience of their arrest that fateful night, there remained one stern fact: Tracie was free, with a life to reshape and make better, but Little Man must forget about the past, serve his time as a juvenile offender, and hopefully learn from his mistakes.

  Tracie returned to school a new person. He turned in his homework assignments on time and studied hard to get good grades on exams. Gone were the days of calling out students and joking on what they wore or how bad their breath was. Nor did he long for their adoring laughter. A valuable lesson learned, he now knew the high price of popularity and took a new look at the precious freedom he had almost lost to keep it.

  He fell into a healing period, an important time in which he chose to do away with foolish teenage thoughts and ways and take a serious look at how he had lived. He pondered how he could better himself with a positive change that could better shape his future.

  He acquired a serious interest in reading motivational books on the lives of important black men, such as Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Jesse Jackson. The late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became his hero. The famous political leader was assassinated because of his dream that one day races would unite and everyone would be treated equally in America, a dream that Tracie shared. But it bothered him when he watched black entertainers act in roles as pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers. In films of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, such actors were considered role models by many blacks, but not to Tracie. He wanted to see his people portraying respectable characters—judges, lawyers, doctors, teachers, social workers, and bankers, to name just a few.

  “Why not tell those stories yourself?” asked Mr. Bailey, who taught Tracie’s junior English class. He and Tracie were sitting in his classroom after school, discussing a report that Tracie had written about the limited roles for blacks in film.

  “Tracie, there aren’t many black novelists or screenwriters. Whites write every indecent character blacks play on TV. Our people perform because there are no other roles, and we watch them because those actors are all we’ve got. However, everyone would run to stores to buy a book that shows us sitting in the White House or on the bench in the Supreme Court. You have bright ideas; write!”

  Tracie smiled. The kind teacher had answered a question that had stumped Tracie during his period of self-improvement. He wanted to better his life, but he was afraid to take a wrong step forward. He did not want to pursue law, like Thurgood Marshall, if it was the medical field that he should be studying to break into. He did not want to try teaching education, like Mary McLeod Bethune, if he should be taking drama classes to become the next Denzel Washington. He had tried long and hard to crack the mystery of what his life’s calling might be; but up until then, sitting on the opposite side of Mr. Bailey’s desk, he had never thought about becoming a writer.

  By his senior year of high school, Tracie had come to love English, discovering the proper use of grammar and how to spell correctly. He read shelves of books by both white and black authors, studying their writing styles before choosing a category that best suited him. He found that he was mostly attracted to contemporary stories that dealt with current political issues.

  He joined a writing class, start
ed and taught by Mr. Bailey, where he learned the key to successful writing. Tacked to the classroom’s wall was a poster of a beaver hugging and kissing a manuscript. The caption read: “Never fall in love with your first draft.” Tracie revised his stories many times before turning them in to Mr. Bailey, who often complimented the expert presentation of his work.

  Three years into the future, Tracie still often thought about Mr. Bailey, who had never warned him about the painful length of time that it took to establish a writing career. When he had decided to write his first novel two years ago, he spent the first few days just trying to think of an interesting subject—and they had been really tough.

  “You know, I was watchin’ Oprah Winfrey, and this writer talked ’bout how he broke in the business. He said everybody got a story to tell. Hope that helps you.” Coming from his Nana, his strongest supporter, the words meant a lot to Tracie. However, he did not know how to apply them to his experience of writer’s block.

  After days of jotting down brainstormed ideas, sometimes just words of unrelated thoughts, he got a main idea. He imagined a teenage boy who must overcome racism in America to achieve some long-awaited dream. Soon he realized how much he had in common with his hero, Travis White, who also grew up in a housing project. Travis was about the same height and weight, and good-looking.

  The writing process consumed much of his time. Some days he would not attend work or church if he had received hot plot ideas that needed to be written down on paper. It took two years to complete the entire story, which filled a thick manuscript of 307 pages—all handwritten.

  At the beginning of the year, through weeks of deliberation, Tracie had decided on a title for his work of fiction: One People, One Nation, One Peace. It was the greatest feeling in the world, the point at which a writer is ready to be considered professionally. The next step—the most important—was to locate a publisher.