the difference? Niggas still gettin’ fucked over either way.”
“Fuck do you mean by that?”
“I mean God don’t give a fuck about niggas.”
“Come on now, you know I hate when you talk that shit. You can say all you like about that white Christian god, but the black god, Allah, he loves the Black people.”
“Yeah, and look how he shows it.”
“So, what you sayin’?”
“I’m sayin’ there ain’t no way you can believe in no God of the Black people. Not how fucked up shit is for us. Look how we live brother! “
“I’ve heard all this before, Snap. You’re starting to talk in circles.”
“But you ain’t listening. You ain’t feelin’ me though.”
“Snap, my brother, did you ever hear that poem about the man walking through the sand arm in arm with God and as he takes each step he sees his life unfolding before his eyes. Then he looks back at the footprints in the sand and realizes that at the hardest times there was only one set of footprints. The man asks God why he didn’t walk beside him in those hard times and God replies that there are only one set of prints because during those hard times God carried him upon his shoulders. Have you ever heard that poem?”
“God ain’t never carried Black folks and we have the bleeding callused feet to prove it! It seems to me that during the hardest times it was us who carried God!”
“Man, that’s just your pain talkin’.”
Huey waved a hand at me dismissively. I grabbed his hand in mid flight.
“That’s exactly what’s talking. Pain! Pain I shouldn’t ever have had to deal with if God truly loves us.”
“So, then if you don’t love God and you don’t believe He loves you and you don’t think you owe Jesus anything, then why even bother trying to save this little mutherfucker? Why fuck around and get yourself killed over him if it’s like that? Why don’t you just body this kid and try to get back in Scratch’s good graces?”
“’Cause Scratch is the devil. He’s fuckin’ Satan, dog. And I don’t care how fucked up God is, I know his plan has got to be better than what that mutherfucker has in store for us.”
“Well, then you must still have a little faith in your heart after all. ’Cause if you ain’t got no reason to love God then you’d have just let Scratch have this little bastard, but you didn’t. You saved him. There had to be some reason for that.”
“Man, I was just pickin’ the lesser of evils. I ain’t sayin’ I got it all figured out. I don’t know what the fuck is goin’ on truthfully. But I know it’s something much bigger than me and somehow I’ve been chosen to play a part in it. What I need to know now is what we gonna do about Scratch? Ain’t like he can’t figure out that I was headed here. Where the fuck else would I go? So, what do we do?”
“True that. He’s gonna be right on your ass. We can’t sit around here waiting for him to roll through here with every nigga he can find and do my crib like he did your car. If you ask me we should do just like I said and bring it to that mutherfucker first. This shit ain’t gonna rest until one of ya’ll is dead. You know that. So, if you don’t want it to be you, then you’d better take some action and I mean with the quickness.”
“Then that’s how we playin’ it then. Let’s take your car. Bring the kid with you.”
“We’d better take my car ’cause yours is tore down. How the hell did he put that many holes in your ride and you walk away with just that little nick in your ear?”
“I don’t know. Maybe God was on my side.” I smirked and rolled my eyes sarcastically.
“Whatever, dog. Let’s just get ghost before Scratch shows up.”
“But what about Iesha? We can’t just leave your pregnant woman here for Scratch to find. You don’t even want to know the type shit this devil does. All that Satanic voodoo shit he’s into. I don’t want to think about what he’d do to Iesha if he caught her here alone.”
“Man, I got a shotgun in the kitchen, My Mom is on her way home too and you know she don’t play that shit.”
“Bro, call your mom and tell her to meet Iesha at my house. Why take any chances?”
“What makes you think Scratch won’t be checking your crib?”
“I know that’s the first place he’ll check, but by the time they get there Scratch will have already come and gone. Now let’s move.”
We herded Iesha into Charlotte Turner’s avocado green ’78 Monte Carlo and threw the shotgun with a box of shells on the seat as they slipped into the back of the car. Iesha glared at me murderously as she scooted onto the backseat next to the Mossberg pistol grip pump, but remained silent. I had no words to console her or change her mind about what I was. She already knew that I loved her, but she had chosen Huey. What more could I say?
I noticed a small vehicle sitting down at the end of the block with the headlights off and all my alarm bells went off at once. A massive dump of adrenaline hit my bloodstream like a shot of nitro and my hand reflexively went to my holster. Huey saw it too and he already had his Sig out and in his hand. He turned the Monte Carlo’s headlights on and illuminated the block. It was the red BMW sitting there with its windshield starred with bulletholes. I passed the baby to Iesha and motioned for them both to get down on the car floor.
“Get the fuck down!” Huey hit the accelerator so hard that my head whipped back against the seat. I shook it off and reached onto the backseat for the shotgun. Iesha handed it to me along with the shells. Her skin touched mine and sent a chill through me.
“Hold on!”
We whipped a U-turn that rolled us up onto the neighbor’s yard and demolished a withered row of bushes. From the red Beemer came the stuttering report of automatic weapons fire, cracking and smashing through telephone poles, windows, windshields, ripping up the Turner’s ailing porch and thunking into parked cars like coins in a wishing well. He was sweeping the entire street with the weapon rather than just aiming at us and destroying everything in the rifle’s arc as it swung our way. He was tearing the whole block apart with it as the bullets chased us through our frantic turn back out onto the street and down to the corner. The BMW’s lights flashed on and it began to accelerate as we made the left onto Ambrose St.
“Get that fucking shotgun ready!” Huey commanded as a sinister smile broke the surface of his face. “I got an idea.”
We could hear Scratch turning the corner as we passed my house and I noticed that all the lights were out.
Huey hit the gas and we rocketed toward Duval Street. By this time I had the shotgun on my lap jamming shells into it while dropping most of them onto the floorboards.
“You got that shit loaded yet?”
“Yeah, it’s loaded.”
“Then get the fuck out!”
“What?”
“Get the fuck out and blast that fool when he turns the corner!”
Huey whipped the car into a three hundred and sixty degree turn leaving a donut in the street. He leaned across me and opened my door.
“Get the fuck out!”
I dove from the car and sprinted to a parked car just three car lengths up from where Huey had stopped the Monte Carlo. The BMW rounded the corner leaving half the rubber from its tires on the road. Its brakes squealed and the tires smoked when Scratch spotted the Monte Carlo sitting there in the middle of the street waiting for him. The BMW fishtailed and side-swiped three cars before coming to a halt. I rose from behind an orange Toyota and unloaded both barrels into the driver’s side window. Blood splattered the inside of the vehicle and I felt a great weight lift from my shoulders as I watched the blood pour from the driver’s side door in thick sheets that glistened like oil in the scant light. Then I saw something that enraged me so much that I grabbed the shotgun by the barrel and beat the tricked-out Beemer with the butt of the rifle. There was only one person in the car and it wasn’t Scratch. Even with his entire face and upper torso pulverized and flayed open by the buckshot, I could still recognize the face of one of Scratch’s most faithful soldiers— Yellow Dog.
Yellow Dog was perhaps the closest thing Scratch had to a true friend in the game. He looked almost like a
