Goon
I should have been on my way to my baby, and here I was chasing down my junkie ass cousin. I hated to refer to her as one, because then it made it real. I say real, as if I had never picked her ass up out of a trap house while being fucked.
It was a real thing, and something that we had to stop referring to as a sickness.
Soup, rest, and some medicine wasn’t going to cure Inez’s sickness.
Life was already too fucking short and now I was out here when I should have been out of dodge.
Putting my life and freedom on the line like I didn’t have a girl and a baby on the way.
Niggas had respect for me and Khaos in the streets, so once we put the word out not to sell to her, we knew she would emerge. The minute one of the lil niggas from the block called us, I told him to keep her there and pretend he had work on the way.
It had been two days since everyone had left to head to Menace’s island. I had been running around doing last minute shit, and making sure my brother was with me. This stubborn nigga thought I was about to leave his ass behind.
The fuck I looked like laying low and leaving my brother to fend for himself? My aunt was in Jamaica, so I didn’t have to worry about her.
For the last few years, either me or Chef had been locked up so we never did the whole celebrating thing. Not that I celebrated Christmas, but I knew it was important for my moms to have all of her family together, and she could never make it happen.
“How was the drive to Ashbourne?” Khaos questioned, sparking up a spliff, and rolling the window down to let the smoke waffle out.
I turned off Nostrand onto Synder avenue, making my way to where Inez was. We needed to leave tonight, and I wasn’t about to hear shit from her. Quasim hit me up and told me that there was a storm, and he wasn’t sure if I would be able to make it onto the island.
If I had to row that bitch myself, I was making it onto the island. With how pissed Inez had me, she would be fucking rowing before I would. She was the reason that I was here past the days I said I would be.
Moms was already away from home, and I knew that was a lot for her. She had been snatched from her home to fly out the country. The one thing I wanted to give her was her family around the table for Thanksgiving.
If I had to strap both Khaos and Inez to the fucking seat, I would. She deserved this more than anyone that I knew. It was the simple shit that she wanted, and I hated that I had never been able to deliver those things.
Shit like homes, cars, and money were usually the hardest things to give your loved ones.
So, you compensated with spending more time, making memories and doing the important shit.
In our situation, the easiest thing to give her were the homes, money, and cars.
The hard shit was always the time she wanted to spend.
I could never give her those things. The missed holidays and never being there when I should have.
With a baby of my own on the way, I had to do better for my family.
I needed to be an example, and to make sure I made those memories and made up for the lost time. My mother was getting older, her health wasn’t the best, and she needed her sons to be there for her.
As much as I loved my cousin, I knew that eventually I would have to walk away. I couldn’t drown while trying to save someone who kept taking their life vest off. Inez had a line of people that were there to help her and push her into recovery. Instead, she chose to ignore the shit.
“Quick trip. Had some business to handle there.” I was vague in my response, because I was mentally preparing to fight tooth and nail with my cousin.
Khaos took a longer pull as he stared at me. “Niggas acting like I asked for the Krabby Patty formula or something… it was a quick trip,” he mocked.
I chuckled. “Since you fucking worried about me, you packed?”
“Yeah, Daddy.”
“Pause, nigga.”
“You acting like one right now… fuck I gotta go to the freaky ass island anyway.”
I couldn’t help but to laugh. “It’s not even that fucking island, Kenneth.”
Khaos almost choked on his spliff when I called him by his real name. Long ago, we both had settled on our street names and promised that we would call each other by them. We wouldn’t go from drilling some shit to calling each other by our real names.
“Stop fucking with me!” he shoved my shoulder as we turned onto E. 35th street.
We double parked in front of a brick multi-family house. Unfortunately, the family no longer lived there. Lyle’s moms had a stroke, and it was up to him to take over the house and keep it in the family. Instead of renting it out, he converted the shit to a one stop shop for the hood.
Recommendation: Listen to “Preach” by Young Dolph
Khaos put out his spliff and looked over at me. “If Lyle on some stupid shit today… I’m backing my shit out on him.”
I sighed, never disagreeing with him. In the streets, we both considered the other always right. I’d never sit in front of the next man and tell my brother he was wrong. There was a time and place for that, and in front of some fuck nigga was never that.
“Shouldn’t be… told him to hold Inez, and he sounded like he understood. I’m not trying to hear no other shit from him or Inez.” I checked the time on my phone, and shoved it back into my sweats, as I climbed out the truck.
Soon as we double parked, I peeped the few niggas outside looking at the truck. My tints were dark, so I couldn’t even blame them for being uneasy. The minute I stepped out, I could tell they relaxed.
“Where’s Lyle?”
“Link?” The short one out of the group looked at us.
Khaos was already annoyed before we got here, so hearing this man refer to Lyle as someone other than the fucking Lyle we knew, was about to have his ass lose it.
“That nigga’s name is fucking Lyle the crocodile… you see that fucking overbite he got. Fuck is he at?” Khaos shoved past them, annoyed that he decided on changing his name.
“Yo, chill the fuck out… you don’t fucking enter unless I sa—” I punched homie in the mouth, and he fell back onto the small garden fence with rusted white paint.
Not only did I not have time for this shit, but I also hadn’t had pussy in a minute, and a good meal. Inez had me out here like Dog the Bounty Hunter, and now I had to fucking put hands on niggas to just get into the house.
“Who next? ‘Cause If I have to whoop ass out here, when I’m done… I’m gonna grab a water from inside.” I paused and looked at them all. “There’s water inside?”
“Na…Nah,” one stammered.
I nodded my head. “So, if you make me beat the fuck out of all of you, and then I have no water when I’m done, I’m fucking shooting you.”
The pussy bwoys backed away and allowed us to walk into the house.
Niggas was acting like it was Fort Knox instead of the lowest performing trap in Brooklyn.
If this was a real job, Lyle’s ass would have been exiting the block with a cardboard box filled with his belongings.
Lyle was a sheltered pussy before his moms became sick.
He allowed niggas to convince him to enter a life that he knew nothing about.
The smell hit me before I could fully make it inside the house.
Khaos shook his head at the small kitchen table that used to be white.
It was now eggshell with chipped pieces of linoleum on the surface.
It smelled like stale cigarettes and weed, and it clung onto the walls.
The wall near the stove had caked up grease from years of grease splatter.
We walked further into the house, the music blasting, and the carpet carrying a damp funky ass smell.
Shit smelled like someone had washed clothes, left them for days, and then tossed them into the dryer.
It was the middle of the day, and these niggas had bottles on the rickety ass coffee table and cups in their hands, chilling on the couches.
I was almost certain it wasn’t the funky ass carpet, but the couches that carried the smell.
Between the smell of cheap cologne and the opened window, they both were fighting hard to make it smell decent in here.
“We grab Nez and we need to get the fuck gone… this shit gonna settle in my clothes,” I told Khaos, as he looked at everybody in disgust.
He was staring at them like Beyonce’s daughter looking over that balcony. “Where’s Lyle?”
One leaned up with his cup in his hand and I shook my head. He had to have been in his teens, and this was what he was doing. Sitting in this nasty ass trap in the middle of the day when he could have been living life.
Instead, he had a drink in his hand, and from his eyes and slow movements, he had something other than liquor. His friends talked him into hanging out, offered drinks and weed and laced him. It happened all too often in our community when it came to weed.
His life would never be the same. The youth in him would evaporate and his name would become irrelevant. He would be known as the homie who got laced, as he walked the blocks talking to himself.
It was a tale that had been told many times before, and the shit never got easier to witness.
His mouth was moving and no words were coming out.
We both stared at him because he was having a full conversation, but no words were leaving his mouth.
Then the nigga leaned back and nodded like he had just put us onto where Lyle’s ass was at.
“He down the hall,” the equally younger one answered and pointed.
Unlike his friend, he didn’t look like he was partaking in anything that was going on. Khaos stayed behind as I walked down the hall to the room. I said a quick prayer, because Inez better had not been fucking.
I told Lyle to fucking hold her there, not fuck her. He had one job, and if he failed, I wasn’t sure what the fuck would happen.