Kickoff

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"

      I swung wildly, fists sailing hollowly in the wind as I felt myself being flipped over in mid-air. The monotony of the struggle was broken by the odd connecting blow to the faces of my attackers. Yet the satisfying sensation of my knuckles meeting their flesh offered only the briefest of respite as every successful blow only served to further incense my assailants. After what felt like an eternity of resistance, the inevitable happened and I was turbulently immersed headlong into the s**t pit by two pairs of hands so much stronger than my own that it had begun to feel almost pointless to resist their will. And in a sense it was, struggling had only served to prolong this episode and postpone me from exacting my revenge - and it didn't involve stuffing someone into a f*****g trashcan. As a final act of resistance, my hands gripped the rim of the trashcan desperately to brace myself from being further submersed. The receptacle's edges dug into the insides of my fingers as I felt my grip slowly and steadily unfurl. Finally the two older girls each grabbed one of my legs and gave one last mighty thrust that completely submerged me in filth. The last thing I heard was, "Paxtown crazy, dumb hoe," before the loud thud of the can's heavy lid overtook all external sound and echoed robustly throughout the inside of my rancid tomb before ringing out and leaving me with only the blaring white noise of my own vengeful thoughts. My eyes watered as visions of me catching them on the corner of 73rd & Yates and shooting them with whoever else was unfortunate enough to be there with them looped endlessly in my mind. What the f**k were they even doing on this side of Yates anyway? F**k Paxtown.

      I tipped the can over. That was the only way I could have dislodged myself. Once the can was on its side I kicked the lid open and braced my feet against the ground to give myself traction, planted my hands firmly against the inner walls of the can and un-wedged my head from between two full bags of garbage compacted into the bottom of the can. Apparently one of the bags had split open, because as I pulled my head from between them, my hair came with it and slopped against my face in damp, smelly clumps sticky from being thoroughly soaked with garbage juice and littered quite literally with unidentified litter. "Great," I muttered as I wobbly stood, still dazed from the strenuous odor of the trash can and, admittedly, just having the s**t beat out of me. I walked home with thoughts of murder, and a hot shower, on my mind.

      As I trudged down the block, I was intercepted by Cook at the corner of 75th & Phillips. A much needed glimpse of a friendly face in a friendly environment helped dampen my indignation and I could feel my tense mood soften somewhat. Cool y propped against a parked car in front of the corner store, he pushed neck length dreads out of his eyes as if he needed a totally unobstructed view to believe what he was seeing. "Damn shorty, what happened?"

      "The bricks just stuffed me into a f****n' trashcan." I felt my body stiffen and my face grow hot; damn, it pissed me off just to think about it.

      "Shiiiiit, where at? Who was it?"

      "On 73rd. Just off Yates. Vickie and Neesha."

      "Our side of Yates? You ain't have that thing?"

      "Yeah, our side of Yates, Cook," I said impatiently. "And no, I don't have that. If I did I wouldn't be f*****g standing here like this. I'm definitely about to run home and grab it, though."

      His chill suddenly shifted into annoyance, both at my negligence and me snapping at him. "Look shorty, we not kids no more; this s**t not a game no more. You know the hood too hot, you and me especially, for you to be poppin' out empty-handed," he nagged as he tapped the bulge in his waistband concealed by his shirt. "What if they woulda did somethin' worse to you?"

      "Thanks for your concern, mother."

      He sucked his teeth at my insolence as he fished a box of Newports from his pocket. "Yeah, whateva," he spat back before looking away and lighting up a square. A few more of the guys - and Bunny - sauntered out of a nearby alley. As they approached they all gawked at me in awe, surveying the damage. Bunny broke the silence.

      "Damn, they fucked you up, huh," she teased. I just ignored it; I wasn't in the mood for all that right now.

      "Yeah, Paxtown'nem jumped Rudy up on 73rd. Put her in a trashcan and allat," Cook thankfully answered for me. I couldn't bear to recount the incident even one more time until after I had done something about it. "You said Vickie and Neesha, right?" I nodded. "Yeah."

      Chunk made a face. "Aw, them linebacker-built b*****s?" They all broke into laughter.

      With a look of genuine concern, Kilo asked me, "So what you finna do?"

      "I'm finna go break a brick," I shot back, suddenly growing anxious to get home and do what had to be done.

      "Okayyyyyyy, turn up then shorty," JMoe prodded.

      "I feel it," Bunny spoke up. "You want me to come with?" I thought about it briefly and then declined. Bunny was too reckless, we'd surely get booked, possibly this same day. I'd do a lot of things by Bunny's side, but wacking somebody wasn't one of them.

      "Oh. Oh well, then. Be safe," she said, voice tinged with disappointment. She seemed eager for the opportunity to blow at Paxtown, especially Vickie of all people.

      And then it was silent. The gang all just stood there watching me, as if they were anticipating something. Which, in a way, they were. In any case, I was rapidly growing hot, itchy, and uncomfortable as the garbage juice I was soaked in was beginning to dry. "You f*****g smell, go take a bath," jeered Bunny, her way of breaking the awkward silence. So that's what I did. I shook up with everyone and again started for home.

      I walked through the front door to find my younger brother sprawled out on the couch watching cartoons. Alerted by the sound of the door slamming behind me, he turned around. He sniffed the air and made a puckered face before asking me, "Ugh, what the f**k happened ta' you?"

      "Not important. Where's mom?"

       "She went on a date wit' dad." It was kinda nice that my parents were starting to become close again. Both for their sake and because it meant that my mother had way less time to breathe down my f*****g neck all hours of the day.

      "Great."

      He began to sense what was up. "Why? What you finna do," he probed.

      I laughed at him. "Look at me. I'm about to take a shower, JonJon. That's it. That's all. Why are you asking so many questions?"

      He stared at me pryingly, hoping that my eyes would betray my intentions. After a few seconds of staring at each other intently, he finally forfeited, "Yeah aight." I don't know what he was expecting; you can't beat me with my own signature trick. He turned back towards the television.

      "Alright," I repeated before heading to the bathroom.

      Once inside, I locked the door, started the shower, and took a long hard look at myself in the mirror while I waited for the water to heat up. I guess under any other circumstances I would have deeply contemplated the ramifications of what I was about to do, but in this moment all I could focus on was the bits of assorted rancid filth that was now tangled in my otherwise beautiful mane; my normally voluminous afro hung limply around my shoulders, damp and heavy with rapidly crusting garbage juice. The collar of my shirt was also visibly soaked. It took every ounce of restraint I could muster to keep from destroying my mother's bathroom mirror. With a final frustrated huff, I turned away and stripped before hopping into the shower. Beneath the faucet I tried my best to pick all of the bits of random refuse, watching it gather in a gross little pile on top of the drain. "F**k," I muttered. Finally I shampooed my hair, rinsed, and turned off the water before stepping out. After drying off I reached down and scooped the s**t out of the drain, gagging as I lifted it from the tub and dropping it into the toilet. I washed my hands thoroughly, rummaged beneath the counter for the hair dryer and took it into my room.

      By the time I was done drying my hair it was dark; JonJon had left and my mother was still out. Perfect. I locked the door and fished under my mattress for the .38 snub-nose revolver Drama had given me some time before she died. The name of the manufacturer, Rossi, was engraved onto the wood grain handle. I loved the small gun. It was simple to use and maintain, and it hit hard "a difficult quality to find in a gun that was also a reasonable size and caliber for my five foot, 100 pound frame. Best of all: it didn't eject shell casings. I've fired it dozens of times, mostly at loitering crowds of opposing gang members with little regard for who did and didn't get hit. Tonight was my first time setting out with a particular target in mind. I clicked the cylinder release to make sure there was a round in all five chambers before tossing the gun into a fanny pack I had laying around along with a few extra shells. I strapped on the fanny pack and headed out the door.

      I paced back and forth in the elevator the entire seventeen stories down. I must have looked crazy as hell on the security camera. Still, I waved to the doorman and he waved back before returning to watching Netflix on a laptop, not even paying attention to the camera monitors. I stepped out of the lobby and onto the sidewalk, starting down 75th towards Yates. After making it to Yates, I turned and walked two blocks up to 73rd Street. Standing at the southeast corner of 73rd & Yates, I stared hesitantly across the street into enemy territory. I was hoping they'd be posted on this corner so I wouldn't have to venture too deep into Paxtown this late, but it was desolate. I was gonna have to look for them. Or whoever was unlucky enough to be from Paxtown and outside that night. I sighed anxiously and crossed the street. Now officially on the other side of Yates, I convinced myself that I was in too deep to p***y out now.

      As I stalked down the 2300 block of 73rd Street my eyes scanned the alleys between each house and building I passed, anticipating lurking gang members emerging from their shady alcove to confront me. I kept to the left side of the street as I slunk along, allowing me to better screen each oncoming car. "MOBBBB, G-D-K," I shouted, hoping to draw someone, anyone, out. At the sound of muffled clattering in an alley across the street, I stopped abruptly and waited about thirty seconds with my gaze trained on the mouth of the alley and the dark abyss beyond it. I yelled more taunts and briefly waited again before blowing it off and continuing on.

      Clinging to the shadows cast by the buildings to my left, I crept the six blocks that comprised the east-west expanse of Paxtown's turf; as I crossed from one block into the next I taunted loudly in an effort to lure someone out. From Yates all the way to Merrill I did this until I hit the border that separated Paxtown from neighboring C-Block. At Merrill I made a right and trekked north past the dead-end at 72nd Place and toward the corner of 72nd & Merrill, the western-most post of the three Paxtown claimed. Here it was more of the same: absolutely f*****g deserted. Where there were usually bunches of bricks hanging out all over the intersection "in the courtyard of a corner apartment building, on the steps of the huge church across the street, and on the corner itself - there was no one. Still, I walked across the street, planted myself on the church's staircase, and waited for fifteen anxious minutes. In the space of that fifteen minutes, an abrupt recollection took over me -this is the exact spot Keke died in; this was the exact spot Drama killed her in. Though I hadn't actually witnessed it, Drama herself had recounted the episode to me in graphic detail. It was the last day of the first semester of the 2009-2010 school year -I was still in middle school and had only been plugged with the hood for about a few months at that point; Drama was just a sophomore, along with Keke and everyone else their age. It was an especially bitter and windy day; the s**t-end of winter had come early that year, bringing with it a stinging chill amplified by harsh, accosting winds that seemed to snatch the air right from beneath your nose leaving only vacuous space to inhale. Apparently some of the girls from Paxtown, including Keke, had jumped and beaten Drama pretty bad in the hallway at school - I couldn't stop staring at the purplish shiner that marred her otherwise clear sienna-colored face as she told me what happened. It was the prospect of this exact scenario happening to me that in the early days often made me think twice about my decision to turn out a BlackStone from Terror Town. If you counted only the female members from Paxtown and Terror Town, Paxtown outnumbered us by a lot; Paxtown probably had the most female members out of any black hood on the Southside I would say. At the time there were only four of us for about twenty of them. Today the odds were slightly better at eight of us for around fourteen or so of them. Anyway, not too long after the high school let out Drama and Chewy from the fourth floor came straight from South Shore High on 75th & Jeffery to this very corner. Sure enough, Keke and about five other little brick b*****s were posted right here on the front steps of the church when Drama and Chewy strolled up. With the exact .38 I now wielded, Drama opened up on the small crowd. Keke ended up getting hit in the head and passed away at the scene. Another girl named Penny, who would wind up wheelchair-bound at the hands of Chewy in a later incident, also got hit in the leg. I actually caught the aftermath on my way home from the bus. Separated from the scene by red police tape that spanned the perimeter of the entire intersection, I watched on while paramedics loaded a Day-Glo orange bag containing what used to be Keke into the meat wagon. I knew this had to be the doing of someone I was acquainted with; no one else was pressing this hard of a campaign against Paxtown at the time. I rushed the rest of the way home with the jarring image of the church groundskeeper washing a pool of Keke's contents away with a hose to find Chewy and a black-eyed Drama hanging around in the lobby. They took me upstairs to Chewy's place to brief me. That was her first body.

      Revisiting this memory launched me into deep reflection over pretty much everything that's lead up to this exact moment. I became acutely aware of how crazy it was that all my wildest experiences thus far have all been within the same forty blocks or so that Terror Town and Paxtown cohabitated. And now here I was. About to f*****g waste somebody. Apex? Or inception?

      I sat on the steps a little while longer, attentively scanning the intersection with my right hand nestled inside of the fanny pack. Eventually I sighed, rose, and continued on my way.

       There had to be someone on 71st & Paxton. There was always someone on 71st & Paxton. If not, then f**k it, I give up - until tomorrow at least. I doubled back east towards Paxton, this time opting to take a nearby walkway between the corner apartment building and an adjacent house instead of the street in the hopes of ambushing lurking bricks. Yet still as I navigated the dim, tight passage - first into the alley between Merrill and Paxton, then onto the eponymous Paxton itself - I found no one. I emerged on Paxton near 72nd Street and immediately veered left, heading north to Paxtown's main post on 71st Street. Upon crossing 72nd, I was confronted by the familiar urban ambience of music being loudly played from a car. My search was over.

       In the most sanguine turn of events, I finally spotted the opposition further up the block looking most vulnerable beneath the orange glare of the only working streetlamp on the block with their backs turned to me and the rumbling thuds of heavy bass drowning out their surroundings. I stayed on the side of the street opposite of them as I crept along the sidewalk concealed by parked cars and the gangly shadows cast by the trees that lined the paved path. Slowly I inched up the street until I was almost directly across from the small group, peering at them from between two parked cars. Closely I surveyed them. There were five; three guys, two girls - one Vickie. Excellent. Besides Vickie, the other four were also familiar. The second girl was about my age and was in a couple of classes with me before though her name escaped me for the moment. Among the guys was an older boy whom I recognized as "Q". The only reason I knew him by name was because he played basketball with Bunny's brother back when they were in high school, but that was of little concern to me right now. I took note of each of their positions; they all stood in a tight semi-circle mostly facing away from me. Q and the younger girl were perched on the left side of the car's hood. Vickie was the only one that was completely turned away from me. A few more seconds went by and I realized they were passing a small handle of Hennessy amongst themselves. It also reeked of weed. They really should have known better...

      I decided to pick Vickie as my main target, because why wouldn't I? I slipped my hand into the fanny pack and retrieved the .38. To dispatch the last-second jitters that postponed my assault, I forced myself to vividly replay every vile detail from earlier that day " from the moment they first confronted me all the way to the painstaking process that was washing my hair and cleaning the drain. Now thoroughly enraged I emerged from between the cars, weapon raised, and said nothing as I rapidly fired the first three shots in Vickie's direction and the last two toward the other half of the semi-circle I had neglected. After emptying the cylinder, I immediately ducked in anticipation of return fire that never came. Still I assessed the damage from between the parked cars just in case. The only ones left by the car were Vickie and Q. The other three had dashed off, escaping onto 71st Street. Even in the dark I knew I hit Vickie in the head. She had initially slumped over the car, but gravity had toppled her corpse onto the ground where it then rolled partially beneath the car. A thick crimson trail that sparkled under the streetlamp streamed from Vickie's dark resting place beneath the car toward my position. Q sat against the car with a clipped shoulder looking like he was trying to process what had just happened. I advanced toward them, intending to finish him. As I neared with the gun raised, the sound of sirens blared over the music still emanating from the car's speakers. S**t.

      I quickly darted across the street, locking eyes with Q as I made my way. I sneered crazily at him before fleeing into a nearby walkway and then into an intersecting alley. I sprinted down the alley back to the hood, slowing only to shout over my shoulder, "Terror Town crazy!"