picked my pace up again.
But then I noticed hand gestures coming from Sleepy’s car. Thinking they were joking with me and clowning, I flipped them off as I approached the front of the car. Unbeknownst to me, they were trying to warn me of the imminent danger. For they had seen the carload of shooters bend the corner with their lights off moments after I rolled out of Shadow’s driveway into the street. They sat motionless and waited for me to be cut down.
I never saw the car until it was parallel with me and I was staring down the barrels of five weapons under the unfriendly faces of my enemies. Fortunately, they wanted to see who they were killing—they wanted some points—and this gave me an edge.
“Look, look,” exclaimed an overly excited voice from within the car, “it’s Monster Kody!”
“Shoot that nigga, shoot him!” another faceless voice shouted.
Too late. By now I had reached the front of Sleepy’s car and was diving behind it in an attempt at survival. Before I hit the ground the shooting began. Sitting parallel with Sleepy’s car, they proceeded to riddle the car with bullets. I lay in the dirt and hoped they wouldn’t have the heart to exit their car and see if I were hit or dead. It seemed like five minutes before the shooting stopped. I knew for sure the homies inside the car were dead.
I waited until I heard the shooters’ car screech away before I began to move, or even think about coming from behind Sleepy’s car. This had been a close call. Death, it seemed, was stalking me. My brushes with it were becoming more frequent and increasingly more serious. Had they used the shoot-first-ask-who-later policy, I would have been killed.
From the sound of their weaponry they had some heavy calibers. I distinctly remembered seeing an M-I carbine and some big handguns. I later found out the identity of the shooters, as well.
Getting up slowly so as not to be tricked into the screeching-tire trick—where a soldier would be waiting with a weapon when I emerged—I began to hear rustling in the car and was awestruck to find that everyone was still alive. Sleepy was sitting in the driver’s seat. Next to him sat Big Lynn, who stood six feet, three inches tall and weighed in at a hefty 340 pounds. Her arms measured twenty-two inches around. We often used her as a disciplinary board for unruly homegirls and, to be perfectly frank, some homeboys. Behind Big Lynn was Gangster Brown, and to his left sat his younger brother, Fatty.
They had been sitting there for some time, slipping bad, smoking PCP. When they saw me dive behind the car, they slid down in their seats. Miraculously, no one was killed, though all had suffered buckshot strafing and glass cuts from the shattering windows.
They pulled themselves from the wreckage—and that’s exactly what it was. It’s amazing how in a matter of seconds a car of such expense can be reduced to a hunk of Swiss metal, absolutely useless. Standing there in the street surveying the damage, Sleepy could not believe what he saw. We counted twenty-eight bullet holes in the body of the car, not including the individual buckshot dents. Fatty had taken a large-caliber shot right through the bib of his hat. Everyone was bleeding on the arms and neck; areas not covered by clothing were bloody. What held them from falling into shock was the PCP. Even after the shooting, they were not in total control of their faculties.
I was not on PCP and was visibly shaken. I had no sedative. By now my nerves were all but shot. Combat was starting to take its toll on me. It seemed as though I was viewing a body every other month, or having brains and blood splattered all over me. Death, or the fear of death, became my constant companion. But still my dedication, my patriotism, was strong; the
Trying to stir Sleepy into a retaliatory mood proved fruitless. He and the others were too intoxicated to mount any serious defense and seemed unconcerned about anything but their wounds and Sleepy’s car. This goes back to what I have already explained about military personnel and combat soldiers. Although all of the victims in this case were in the military, none were actual combat soldiers. When struck, they had no immediate inclination to strike back. Often they’d relay the assault to the combat division, and a counterattack would then be carried out. Combat troops, on the other hand, would have assembled, mounted, and been en route to a designated spot before the smell of cordite cleared the air. Rapid deployment brought instant recognition to those involved as a serious group of cats bent on upholding their prestige.
Disgusted at their lack of concern, I mounted the bike and continued my journey home. When I turned onto my block and had gone about four houses, a purple Duster sped toward me and fired one shot. Either the driver or the shooter—or perhaps both—were inexperienced in the technique of doing a drive-by, because I didn’t even feel the closeness of the bullet. My forward motion and their speed in the opposite direction had obviously thrown the shooter’s aim off. He probably aimed directly at me—a moving target—causing his shot to go somewhere behind me, no doubt into one of the houses I was passing. The car kept straight but picked up speed, probably thinking they had actually done something. My pace had been momentarily broken, but I never dismounted my bike.
When I got to my house my sister was standing out front. Though she had heard the shot, she had not known what had happened. Surprisingly, she was not accosted and asked to identify herself. Had the shooters found out that she was my sister, she would have been shot or kidnapped. Though our war had not yet reached the level of kidnapping and executing family members, it was being talked about as an inevitable consequence in our headlong escalation.
This, too, pointed up the inexperience of these shooters. If they were on Sixty-ninth Street, that meant they knew I lived there, and their intentions were to try to catch me or one of my homies coming from or going to my house. My combat mentality was still at its peak from the brush with death around the corner, so when I got to where my sister was standing I yelled at her to “take her ass in the house,” and that “didn’t she know there was a goddamn war going on out here?” She stared for a moment then ran inside.
Putting up Li’l Monster’s bike, I had a thousand thoughts running through my head. Once in my room I sat down on the end of my bed to devise a plan in the midst of this latest attack. Usually we’d respond right away, but tonight there seemed to be a lull in our communication—the drums weren’t beating. I phoned Sidewinder in an attempt to consolidate a riding party of able soldiers and was shocked at what I heard. The very same car that shot up Sleepy’s car had also rode on Sidewinder and some other homies up in the Eighties ’hood; their initial attack had taken place on Seventy-first Street. But this wasn’t the shocker, for it was common for one car to make a full sweep of an entire neighborhood. The surprising news was that in their attempt to shoot one of our homies, they had shot and critically wounded a member of the Inglewood Family Bloods, who had been creeping into our ’hood to shoot Sidewinder and the homies. The shooter car met a righteous resistance in the Eighties and didn’t get the chance to do any damage, although shots were exchanged. When asked what they did with the Blood, Sidewinder responded, “We sent him to his Maker.”
Now I was depressed. It seemed then that we were in totally occupied territory. Hanging up the phone I lay back on my bed and looked over at the empty bed beside mine. My younger brother, Li’l Monster, had been captured for an armed robbery along with Li’l Harv and a woman named Speedy—a close associate of the ’hood and a firm supporter of the criminal class. He had been given six months in camp. I wished he was there because he’d be down to launch an attack from right here. But Bro was not there and Crazy De was still in the Hall. Shit. I felt trapped. I had to do
I retrieved my double-barrel from beneath the dresser and checked it for munition. Then I went out and got back on Bro’s bike. Holding the shotgun—which had been sawed off for stealth—across the handlebars, I peddled west toward the borderline that separated our ’hood from the Sixties.
Wearing my combat black I crossed Western Avenue and entered their ’hood on the left flank, in what today we call the first parallel. I made my way cautiously up Sixty-ninth Street to Horace Mann Junior High School. Rumor had it that they had been using Horace Mann as a meeting place, for they had still failed to procure a park for their meeting and mounting place.
I circumvented the school on its left side, which was on Seventy-first. There I parked my bike and traveled on foot. I hopped the school fence with the shotgun in my waistband, landing on the other side with a thud. When I got to the lunch area I was disappointed to find no one there. Had they been at the school, this is where they would be found, because the lunch area was covered with a roof.
Moving now on instinct, I continued through the lunch area and out to the makeshift bungalows, which had been constructed to allow school to continue while the administration building was being renovated. I began to hear music in the distance. The closer I came to the north side of the school, the louder the music got. “Finally,” I said to myself, “someone to shoot.”
Creeping slowly toward the area I believed the music—and now loud talking—was coming from, I kept a
