by Erica Hilton
Julie heard the sincerity in her son’s voice, and frankly she was glad that he’d brought the subject back up. She too was ready to leave the hood. She certainly didn’t want to die in the hood.
“Nelson, let’s go and buy us a house!”
Nut was elated at his mother’s response. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and said, “As soon as I come back from the Soul Train Music Awards, we’re going house hunting.”
***
“Damn, I think we just made a baby,” Tawana said the next day as she tried to catch her breath.
“That shit was good, right, ma?”
Tawana languorously stretched and nodded in agreement. She could fuck Nut all day. He had a big dick and certainly knew how to use it. They were at Nut’s apartment in Clinton Hills, and her two-year-old son, Hassan, was sleeping peacefully in the next room.
“What are your plans for the day?” she asked.
“You know I got to go check up on my spots. What about you?”
“I wanted to go to the city and see what’s up. The stores be sweet on Sundays.”
“Well what about little man? Whatchu gonna do with him?”
“My moms is at church, so I know she ain’t gonna watch him. I’ll just have to take him with me.”
Nut was disgusted. “What I tell you about that shit?”
“What?”
“Bringing him on your boosting sprees! What if you get jammed up?”
“It ain’t even like that. He’ll sit in the car while I’m in the stores.”
“You’re gonna have him sitting in the car all day? Sometimes you be in them stores for two and three hours. What type of shit is that?” Nut was seriously rethinking having a baby with Tawana. The thought had begun seeping into his head recently, because he wanted a child. Being around Tawana’s son had brought out his parenting skills, and since he was playing daddy to another man’s baby, he wanted his own seed. But now he realized that Tawana was a horrible mother, and he didn’t want any part of that.
“He ain’t complaining, so why are you?”
“You know what? Go do you, and I’ll take him with me and get him a haircut or something.”
“Oh, so he can come with you to pick up drug money, but not with me? How you sound?”
“Bitch, is you stupid? Why the fuck would I take a child on a drug run? I’ma let Head take care of that bullshit and just spend the day with shorty!”
As he promised, Nut took Hassan with him for the day. He decided to take him for a haircut and then to McDonald’s. As they cruised the Brooklyn streets, he felt really good about his future. He decided that he was going to cut off Tawana and find a good girl to marry and have his baby. But before he did that he needed to get his key back from her. This was a new year, and he was a new dude.
He looked over at Hassan and realized that he would miss the little guy, but, fuck it, life went on. Just as he pulled up in front of his barbershop, his pager went off. It was Tawana.
He hopped out of his car, took Hassan inside, and got him situated with the barber. “Give him a shape-up and clean up the top. Cut him down lower. His mother still got him rocking a high top fade. That shit is played out.”
“I hear you,” his barber replied, and began to clean his clippers to cut Hassan’s hair. Nut stepped outside to call back Tawana.
“Yo, what’s up?” he asked.
“I was thinking about what you said, and you’re right. I’m not going to go out today. I’m going to stay at your house and cook Sunday dinner. Would you like that?”
Nut smiled. She must have known that her time was up. “Yeah, that’s cool. I’ll be back in an hour—”
The first shot that rang out was forceful enough to spin Nut on his toes. The second shot grazed his left shoulder. Nut reached for his burner, but in a panic it dropped from his hand. He saw the Dominican gunmen as they continued to buck shots at him. He knew their faces well. It was Hector and Juan, two of Luis’s men.
Nut took off running down the street, and the gunmen gave chase, continuing to shoot. If he could only make it a few more blocks, he’d be in Langston Hughes projects surrounded by the safety of his soldiers.
The next shot hit Nut in the back and instantly severed his spinal cord. A million things went through Nut’s head. He didn’t want it to end like this. He was afraid for it to be over.
It ain’t over until I say it’s over! he thought as he tried to crawl to safety. The pain was excruciating, and he knew he’d taken a hit that could be fatal. Where the fuck are the police? he wondered.
As he crawled toward a parked car, he could no longer feel his legs. His whole lower body felt like dead weight. Thoughts of his mother hearing the news of his death flooded his mind. What about all the people who counted on him? Then he thought about Peter Piper. His cousin had murdered him from the grave. He was being taken out over consignment.
Nut felt the Dominicans’ presence just as they towered over him. They didn’t have much time before the police arrived.
“This is from Luis,” Hector said. Two shots were fired to the back of his head, and Nut was dead on the scene.
***
Nut would have had a lot of people at his funeral had it not been the same day as the Soul Train Music Awards. All of his so-called friends couldn’t pass up the opportunity to head to California. Julie didn’t have an insurance policy on her son, nor did she have any money to bury him. When she went to his apartment after she’d gotten the news of his demise, she saw that Tawana had cleaned it out of all the valuables. Next she called Head and asked him about the stash house her son told her about where he kept his life savings and all of the money from his spots, but Head told her she was talking crazy.
Julie did the best she could for her son with the money her church raised to bury him. He had a cheap wooden casket and his grave didn’t have a headstone. It broke her heart to lay him to rest in that manner.
From her window in her project apartment she saw that Head had taken her son’s spot. Within a week of her son’s funeral, Head bought a brand new Mercedes Benz 500 SL and a Land Cruiser truck. But what was the icing on the cake was that Tawana was now his girl, sitting shotgun in the front seat of Head’s car.
Melissa took the news of Nut’s murder just as badly as Julie. In her heart of hearts she truly loved him, no matter how many times she’d tried to convince herself otherwise. She wished over and over again that she could turn back the hands of time and just hold his body once again. Or see his round, expressive eyes. Or listen to his distinctive laugh. She knew that she would go to her grave always wondering what if? What if they’d met under different circumstances? Their love was the right love at the wrong time.
Although Julie had sent Butter a kite, the news of Nut’s murder had hit the prison only hours after he was pronounced dead on the scene. Butter hung his head low and fought back tears. Lil Nut was his man; more like a brother. Butter felt his friend was invincible and surely wouldn’t fall victim to the streets. Lil Nut had outlived his father, Lamiek, Lite, Blue Bug, Fuquan, Red, Peter, and a host of other motherfuckers who fell victim to the crack. Butter realized that they were all casualties of the drug game; there were no winners. He told himself that he’d see his man again on the other side.
Head was now in charge of the organization that Nut had built. He’d called a meeting to lay down the ground rules of what not to do in this crack game. The streets were buzzing that Nut got murdered because he took fifteen keys on consignment, and refused to pay his debt. Head now regarded his icon as a stupid motherfucker, and he vowed never to make the same mistakes Nut had.
“Listen to me, little niggas, there’s rules to this crack game here. There’s enough money out here for all of us to eat off of. If we follow these rules, we can take over the game and shut it down. I’m talking we can all be millionaires
. Now, as y’all know, Nut was my man, but he was hardheaded. We’re going to avoid all the pitfalls he ran into and treat this like a business. This ain’t the eighties when TNT motherfuckers were jumping out of vans and spraying shit in your face, with crackheads running around like zombies. It’s 1993! We the future. We got functioning crackheads, the kind that work all week and get high on the weekends. We got niggas going hard in each state. Those country niggas need weight, and we’re the crew that’s gonna supply it to them. Those Alabama and Kentucky bamma fucks be on our New York dicks! They wanna talk like us, dress like us, and sell dope like us. I’m not biased. I’m ready to welcome them all with open arms. In this business only one color rules, and that’s green.
“As y’all know, I came up with the idea for the stash car. That means that we can have steady product on the highways and the state troopers can’t do shit to us. We’re invincible. And we all better live by our code. And that’s to leave no man behind. If you’re in our crew, then can’t no one go up against us. If one of us got beef, then we all got beef.” A few young dudes nodded their heads.
“Now everyone is gonna have a specific job to do, but everyone’s goal is the same—protect Head. There’s a reason the saying is, ‘Head Nigga in Charge.’ If y’all motherfuckers let someone get at the head of the organization, everything around will crumble. For y’all slow motherfuckers who can’t understand that logic, peep this. If someone shoots you in the head, your body will shut down and not function. I’m telling y’all motherfuckers, if y’all want to continue to eat, then y’all better watch my back by any means necessary.”
Head knew that stepping up to take Nut’s place would put him in a vulnerable position, and he didn’t want none of the little niggas to get heart and try to take his slot. They could easily see how he got upgraded once Nut got murdered. So to knock down anyone’s bright ideas, he had to put fear in their hearts. Head was going to run his organization differently. It was only 1993, and he knew that ten years from now he was going to take over the world.
Head hopped in his ride and headed toward the Tunnel nightclub. He popped in a new cassette by this kid from Brooklyn that he’d been hearing a lot about lately. He was supposed to be performing there tonight. Head wanted to kick it with him. The Brooklyn rapper called himself Biggie Smalls. The song “Party and Bullshit” blasted throughout the luxury jeep.
Yeah, Head knew that he could only go up from here, as long as he adhered to the ten crack commandments.
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