“I wish it were that simple. Hey, ever heard the words mankind and human?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard ’em.”
“Do you know what hue is?” he asked, looking at me now over the top of the car.
“Hue? No, don’t know what it means.”
“Color, it means color!”
“And?”
“And? Bro, can’t you see it? Look… human… hue-man.”
“Oh,” I said with a big grin of recognition, “color-man, man of color, right?”
“Right! Now, that means humans are people of color, all people of color. Brown, red, yellow, et cetera, dig?”
“Yeah.”
“And melanin is the ingredient that produces skin color. Europeans, mutants—”
“What’s a mutant?”
“Something produced from… or an out-growth of… Anyway, these mutants don’t have any melanin, therefore they are colorless.”
“White,” I said.
“Right, white is colorless. And to be without color is to be abnormal because the majority of the world’s people are hue-man.”
“Colored!”
“Right! So it’s normal to be of color. Which means they are, as mutants, a kind of man, therefore mankind, you dig?”
“Damn, that’s
“Brotha, we as Afrikan people are weak because mankind has cut off our nutrition from the Motherland. He has twisted the world so that Europe, the Mad Doctor, looks like the center. And
“That’s a trip.”
“You’ll learn, Brotha. Insha Allah, you’ll learn.”
We drove back through South Central with Muhammad speaking on other issues; he always inspired me to search for the truth. When we got to Mom’s house he asked if I had started on either one of the books he had given me the day before. I told him that I hadn’t, but that I intended to. He said I should start with Fred Hampton in the Black Panther book. I said “Cool” and closed the car door. Muhammad asked through the open window if I wanted to go with him to a seminar the following week and I said yes, that I’d be glad to. “Righteous,” he said, and drove away.
I just stood there looking at the back of Muhammad’s car thinking about what he had said. Actually, I was trying to get it right so I could tell Mom. I never heard the car roll up.
“Yo’, what up, muthafucka?”
Damn, I knew that voice but was reluctant to turn and see who it was. Just shoot me in the back, I said to myself, but I turned around and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t Huckabuck.
“Cuz, what’s up?” I said. “Get yo’ black ass out the hoop. Park that piece of shit. Uhh-uhh, not here in front of Mom’s pad ’cause I know that muthafucka’s stolen.”
“Nigga, this my shit, it ain’t stolen!”
“Well how I’m s’posed to know that?”
I hadn’t seen Huck in years, and it was like seeing a long-lost brother. He was missing all of his top teeth, a result of a high-speed chase with the police in which his car flipped completely over. He said that Fly and Lep had been in the car, as well. Lep broke his arm, and Fly escaped with minor abrasions. I asked where Fly and Lep were now, hoping to get a reunion going, which seemed like a great idea in the light of what had happened in the past nine years, since my recruitment. Huck said that Fly had dropped out of sight, though his baby brother had joined up with the ’hood. Lep had fallen victim to the new enemy—crack—and was doing everything and anything to get a blast.
Huck and I kicked it about Tray Ball’s death and G.C.’s life term. Things were developing every which way. Who was to say that because we were still here we were any better off than Tray Ball or G.C.? We talked about the successful double murder of two Sixties that Slowpoke, Fish Bone, and Football—Damian “Football” Williams’ older brother—put down recently, which stunned me. The obvious karma of it was startling.
Two Sixties—Kenbone and Kid—had come into our ’hood prowling for a victim and run across Li’l Frogg at the gangster store on Florence and Normandie. They’d stood outside and demanded that Li’l Frogg “bring his tramp ass out.” Of course Li’l Frogg refused, knowing that any enemy on Florence and Normandie had to be well armed. Unfortunately for Li’l Frogg, some of our homegirls were in the store, which made it a “man thang,” so he had to go face the music. And he knew the tune would not be nice. To his surprise he got hold of Kid and beat him before Kenbone could shoot him five times. Once Li’l Frogg lay wounded, the two fled.
The next day at approximately the same time a Search and Destroy team spied both Kenbone and Kid exiting the Taco Bell on Sixtieth and Crenshaw, rolled up on the unwitting pair, and shot each sixteen times with .22 rifles. Now that was something.
“So what else is up wit’ you?” Huck asked.
“Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.”
“You seemed to have slowed down some,” Huck said with a look of “I told you so” on his dark face.
“Yeah, a bit. Shit, really ain’t nobody out here to kick it with. I was kickin’ it with Brown and Tracc, but cuz, them be havin’ me smokin’ that Sherm and that shit make me crazy.”
“They still doin’ that shit?”
“Every day. I be kickin’ it with Stagalee now, though.”
“Who?”
“Stagalee.”
“Oh, cuz that stay over on Sixty-sixth?”
“Yep, he straight down, too. Last week we went up to Fat Burger on Crenshaw to try and catch some Sissies and cuz almost blasted some Main Streets. Droopy and them was out there, too. If I hadn’t known cuz, they would have got blasted!”
“Where Li’l Monster? Still locked down?”
“Yeah, he in Y.T.S.”
“What they give cuz for that murder?”
“Thirty-six to life, but you know he’s a juvenile, so he can only do seven. He been down fo’ already. What’s up wit’ Li’l Huck?”
“Cuz live in Swan ’hood. He be fuckin’ up. Just the other day he blasted some Swayhooks”—a disrespectful term for Swans—“who lived next do’ to us.”
Huck and I rapped on in this manner until he had to go. Before his departure we swore not to let another six years see us apart. No sooner had Huck left than Joker rode up on a beach cruiser. I could tell by his facial expression that something wasn’t right.
“What’s up?”
“Monster, cuz,” he began, literally fighting back tears, “them Hoovers be trippin’, man. We gotta get wit’ them niggas, cuz.”
“What happened, homie?”
“Cuz, last night me and Li’l De fell to one of they parties on One-oh-fourth, Big X-ray’s pad, right? And cuz, I was all drunk and shit, but you know, I ain’t trippin’ on no Hoovers. But Macc from Eleven Deuce start woofin’ some way-out shit and—”
“You and Li’l De was the only two gangsters there?”
“Naw… well at first, ’cause Li’l Harv’s bitch-ass came later. But anyway, cuz go to woofin’ that shit, right? And you know how Hoovers get when they deep…”
Joker paused and turned his head. I could see he was really hurt.
“So anyhow, me and cuz get to scrapin’—”
“Who?”
“Macc from Eleven Deuce. And Monster, you know cuz a G, he ’bout yo’ age. Well, like I said, I was drunk,
