Grace After Midnight_ A Memoir - Felicia Pearson [16]
Cops never did find us.
Me and my niggas were hired by a dealer to go after some deadbeats. The guys thought they gave us the slip. They went to the mall. They figured with all those shoppers around, the mall had to be safe. They figured wrong.
We followed them past Shoe City. One of them turned and gave us a look that said, “What y’all going to do? Pop us in the mall?”
We popped ’em in the mall.
My little man K did the shooting.
Then there was shooting on the corner of Biddle and Marfat.
I’m walking down the street with my nigga. Just chillin’. Here comes a U-Haul truck. Me and my boy look at each other like this ain’t right. The U-Haul truck is going real slow. You don’t see slow-moving U-Haul trucks on this street every day. And the driver’s looking nervous. I catch his eyes and see something I don’t like.
We step back.
U-Haul pulls to the curb.
Back of the truck slowly rolls open.
And suddenly the spraying starts.
Niggas from the west side with nothing better to do than to come east and start spraying.
Fuck those motherfuckers.
Me and my boy duck behind some garbage cans. I pull out my nine-millimeter and blast back. The fools in the U-Haul are sitting targets.
Two of them go down.
They don’t touch us.
They run outta there with us still shooting at their asses.
Then there’s the graveyard. Seems like we always go to the graveyard. The funeral home and the graveyard.
The graveyard is all foggy this afternoon. It rained in the morning and now a thick fog has moved in. We’re there ’cause our friend J was killed by mistake. They killed J thinking he was B. J was a sweetheart. J was our homeboy. B is an asshole. The sweetheart got shot and the asshole is still walking around. B is up there with us telling J good-bye.
We walking toward the grave to bury J when, behind us, we see this guy approaching. We don’t know who the fuck he is.
The eyes. The eyes always give it away.
This stranger’s eyes are showing nervousness. And before we know it, he starts shooting at B. Shooter was sent to J’s funeral to get B, the nigga they wanted dead to begin with.
We say, “Oh, no. Not up in here. You can’t disrespect J by turning his funeral into a fuckin’ shooting gallery.”
My man hits the shooter with a silencer. He goes down slowly, slumped over someone’s grave.
We leave him there and go bury J.
A few days later someone catches up with B and shoots him dead.
Wu-Tang Clan is out with “Protect Ya Neck.” Later they screaming about “C.R.E.A.M. . . . cash rules everything around me.”
Word.
LEAD BAT
Who did I think I was?
Why was I doing what I was doing?
I look back and wonder why.
I look back and ask myself questions that are hard, maybe even impossible, to answer.
But at the time questions weren’t part of my life. Questions weren’t part of my thinking.
I didn’t ask.
I just did.
“What the fuck you doing?” Uncle would ask. “Word out there is that you crazy and getting crazier every day. You got to slow down, Snoop.”
“What for?”
“To keep your little ass alive—that’s what for.”
I knew Uncle loved me. I knew he cared. But Uncle wasn’t stopping me.
Neither was Father. I’d see Father roll by in his hundred-thousand-dollar ride. He’d pull over and say, “You staying outta trouble, Snoop?”
“No way,” I’d answer honestly.
He’d laugh and lay a hundred on me.
“This is for schoolbooks,” he’d say, “and nothing else.”
I’d take the money and buy another joint.
Seeing what I saw, being who I was, I knew it was my balls and my nine-millimeters that was keeping me alive.
I wasn’t backing down from no one. I wasn’t backing down from life.
Life was the streets and the streets didn’t scare me none.
Then these dreams. The details were