Chapter 2
The front of the building was blocked off. Calhoun and I both sobbed uncontrollably as we though our friend was being wheeled out on a stretcher.
The bag I was holding slipped from my hand. Calhoun tossed his bag on the ground with anger.
“This is some fucking bullshit!” he said between sniffles.
I couldn't talk, I was sobbing too hard. I instantly thought about all the good times we had all had. Things would never be the same. I knew it. I closed my eyes as hot tears spilled from them. Paul was only fourteen and was dead?
Then out of nowhere someone tapped me on my back, saying, “What happened?”
I jumped and turned to see Paul behind me.
“Aww! Nigga! We thought that was you!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, man!” Calhoun yelled, “Where you been?”
“I went to the doctor with my mama today.”
We both leaped on top of his wheelchair and started punching him, happy our friend wasn't dead.
But it turned out our good times didn't last long before we were hit with the real tragedy. Spinabifida, the disease he was born with that caused him not to walk, took his life a couple months later. Calhoun and I never got over it. Calhoun and I were never the same. Things were never the same and our fun was never the fun it used to be.
Back then Calhoun and I were inseparable. We still had a close relationship but I couldn't lie and say that the bad choices that Calhoun made didn't disappoint me. I grew up, he never did. Truthfully, I didn't have many male friends because I didn't have time to be dealing with hate or no nigga being thirsty in regards to what I had. Jealously was not just reserved for women.
I half listened to Calhoun as he went on the subject of stuff I cared very little about. Finally I told him, “I'm going to sleep.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Sleep? It's Friday. What the fuck you going to sleep for?”
When I didn't answer, he said, “Come on.”
I grabbed they keys and inserted it in the lock. “I don't have your kind of fun. You, for some reason, keep walking around acting like they can't lock your black ass up again.”
He waved me off. “Man, you sound like my pops. I don't need to hear this shit.”
“Well, you should listen to it.” I pushed open my door.
“Man, I just wanna go ride, get some pussy.”
“I'm good on that.” I walked inside while Calhoun followed after me.
Chapter 3
I turned around just in time to see Calhoun shake his head at me. “You still stuck on Toi. I don't blame you, though. That bitch got aâ”
I grabbed Calhoun by his neck. “Don't use that language in my house. You know my mom lives here and don't call my girl out her name. You gonna make me fuck you up,” I whispered.
He pulled away from me. “Sorry, man. But you know a nigga saw her first.”
I ignored him on that shit.
I dropped my stuff on my leather sectional. “Ma, you home?” The smell of cooked food wafting into the living room made my stomach grumble. I eyed a sexy painting of Toi on my wall. She was completely nude with a while silk sheath covering her private parts. The only other things that were on my walls was a picture of my mother I had blown up, pictures of Toi. There was also an painting I bought years ago with an African woman holding a basket of tomatoes in one hand and the hand of her son in the other.
“I'm in the kitchen, Chance.”
I walked to the kitchen to see what my mama was cooking. She was mixing a pot on the stove.
“Hey boys,” she said to us. “Chance, I made some pork chops, rice, gravy, and some cabbage with hot water cornbread. Y'all want me to fix you two a plate?”
My mama had me at the age of twenty. She was now forty-two and could easily pass for someone in their thirties. But that is usually how black women were. That “black don't crack” shit was true. My mom was dark skin with full lips and an oval-shaped face. She always had her long hair pulled back into a ponytail and simple clothes like sweat suits that always covered her body. While I took my dad's light brown complexion, strong jawline, height, and build. I was six-foot-three and had always been a big dude. I had well-toned arms and was blessed with a six-pack I tried to maintain by working out four times a week. My silky, curly hair, light brown eyes, full lips, and my set of dimples all came from my mama. I wore my hair in a set of natural curls and sported a goatee. I didn't have a problem favoring my mother more than my father. To me my mama was the prettiest woman in the world. Often other men took notice of her beauty too. A couple times I had to slap Calhoun upside his head for lusting on my mother. And even though she wasn't aging on the outside, she was on the inside. Years of stress affected my mama's health. She had high blood pressure and had already had two strokes. That's why I was trying to take as much stress off of her as I could.
I kissed her on her cheek. “Naw, Mama, I'll get it.”
“Okay, well, everything is ready.” She grabbed a towel and wiped her hands on it. As she walked away she stopped and said, “Before I forget, Toi called and said to call her back, that it was important.”
I chuckled as my mom walked away. I frowned at my friend. “You want a plate, man?”
“You know I do.”
“Come on.”
I scooped two pork chops with dark brown gravy and onions, white rice and cabbage with bacon onto a plateâ one for Calhoun and one for me. I topped them off with hot watered corn bread.
We both sat down at the kitchen table to dig in the food.
My mom came back in the room. “Well, that's my ride, baby.”
“Where you going, Mama?” Calhoun asked jokingly.
“Me and one of my friends are going down to Pechanga to do a little gambling.”
“I need to be going with you, na'mean?” he joked.
She chuckled but said nothing else. She was never really social with Calhoun. I thought it was because he was always a nuisance and posed as a bad influence on me. When I was a kid his dad was always knocking on our door and yanking Calhoun to his car and telling my mother to keep me away from Calhoun, like I was the bad influence. It didn't matter what his father said, Calhoun always came back. His father lived to regret those words later on when while I was graduating from college, Calhoun was in jail yet again.
I swallowed the food in my mouth. “You need some money?” I asked.
“No. I got my quarters I been saving for the past couple months.”
“How you expect to gamble with only quarters?” Calhoun asked.
My mom ignored him. So did I.
I reached in my wallet and grabbed two hundred-dollar bills and handed them to her. “Have fun, Ma.”
“I will. I'll be back on Sunday.” She pecked my cheek and was out the door.
“Play the nickel machines for me!” Calhoun joked.
I got up, grabbed two cups and filled them with some cranberry juice I had in the fridge.
I sat a cup in front of him and downed the juice in mine.
Calhoun, out of nowhere, started chuckling. “Aye remember that time we broke into Fred Sanford's house?”
I chuckled, thinking back to that day.
Christmas had just passed and my mom worked crazy hours to have a surprise for me under the Christmas tree: a bike. I was happy as hell to have one and made sure I took extra care of it. Calhoun had already lost two bikes and was on his third one. His father told him that if that one came up missing, he wouldn't replace it. During that time, a lot of kids' bikes in the Springdales were coming up missing. And no one could figure out who was taking them. Then finally it was discovered that a dude who stayed in the house across the street from the Springdales would drive around and if he saw a bike outside he would get out his beat-up old truck, hobble to the bike, grab it, put in the back of his truck, and drive away. So I made sure that I kept my bike with me at all times. I always had an eerie feeling when I saw him driving around the neighborhood. My bike meant something to me and I knew my mom got this not only for Christmas but because she saw how much Paul's death had affected me.
One day Calhoun was over my house and all we had to snack on was a bag of ninety-nine-cent Fritos. It was the end of the month so food was always scarce in my house around this time. Calhoun only had a dollar left from his allowance so we grabbed the bag of Fritos and we rode our bikes to the local store that sold chili-cheese nachos. But instead of paying three dollars for them, we gave the store our Fritos and had them put cheese and chili on them. For a dollar they did it with no problem.
We grubbed them down quickly.
I paused my eating, watched Calhoun, and said, “You probably got all kinds of snacks at home.”
Calhoun didn't respond, just kept smacking. It was just something about this hood life that he liked. I didn't get it at all.
As we rode our bikes back to the Springdales, my stomach started bubbling like I had to take a shit. I looked to see if maybe Calhoun was having the same problem as me. And sure enough, he was clutching his stomach too.
“I gotta shit,” I said.
“Me too. They must have gave us some fucking bad chili!” Calhoun yelled.
We pedaled as fast as we could back to Springdales and without thinking threw our bikes down out front and raced inside my house to use the bathroom.
I sat on my toilet and let loose while Calhoun banged on the door. When liquid shit wouldn't stop pouring from me, Calhoun gave up and I figured he went next door to his aunt's house to shit.
When we came back outside our bikes were gone.
I sat on my porch trying not to cry while Calhoun paced in front of me.
“I know that muthafucka got our bikes, man.”
I didn't say anything.
“My daddy said if I lost this bike he's not going to buy me another one.”
I nodded. “My mama can't afford to buy me another one if she wanted to.”
He slapped his hand into the palm of his other hand. “Fuck that! We need to get our bikes back.”
“How we gonna do that? You know he ain't gonna admit he took âem.”
“We need to get inside his house somehow.”
So over the next few days we watched that man. We named him Fred Sanford because everyday, when he came home that's what he watched on TV. He didn't even watch the news. My mama said everyone should watch the news.
He didn't.
We always watched him from his bedroom window. He left every morning at seven-thirty. Every morning. Probably to go to other cities and look for other bikes to steal with his thieving old ass. Our plan was to gain access to his house from that window.
But it never failed: When he was on his way out, he always closed the window.
That is until one day when he was running late.
We watched it all through some expensive binoculars Calhoun took from his dad. We were upstairs in my bedroom window.
“Are my fucking eyes deceiving me?” Calhoun asked.
We could see him backing out of his driveway. Usually he let that piece of shit warm up. Not today.
Calhoun shoved the binoculars to the right. That's when we saw it. He left his bedroom window open.
We rushed out of my house, snuck to the backside of his house, hopped over his fence, and crept into his backyard. Good thing he ain't had no dog or we would have been fucked.
As soon as we stepped foot in that man's house my nose was hit with the funkiest of smells. I glanced at his TV that had Fred Sanford on. Fred was doing that “Elizabeth” line he always did. I chuckled, then pulled my T-shirt over my face so it covered my nose as we walked around the bedroom. He had shit everywhere. You could barely walk in the room from all the boxes and papers, plates with food on them, dirty cups and shit, dirty clothes. I scanned the room, disgusted at all the roaches that crawled on the walls. His closet door had a chair pushed upside it and the top of the chair was hooked under the doorknob. I started to open it but when a rat sped past my feet, I rushed to the living room. Calhoun was already ahead of me. This fool had stacks of bikes all over his house, mine and Calhoun along with a lot of other kids, even bikes that belonged to girls.
What a sucka.
“Yo. He's a rotten muthafucka,” Calhoun said.
“Yep,” I responded as I looked all around his living room.
He even had skateboards.
What the fuck did he plan on doing with all that shit?
I thought.
He had toys that kids probably left outside like scooters, trucks, play swords and guns, girls' baby dolls and Barbie dolls.
Calhoun came back from the kitchen with four trash bags and we loaded them up with as many toys as we could.
When we were done, we were sweating.
We crept back to the bedroom, planning on going back out the window. But then we figured we couldn't get our bikes out the window, so we were going to have out the front door.
We paused in front of the closet door.
“What you think he has in there?” I asked Calhoun.
He shrugged, sat his two bags down, and tugged at the chair until it gave way.
Then I grabbed the doorknob and opened the door.
Suddenly something flew out of the closet, screeching.
“What the fuck is that!” Calhoun yelled.
Calhoun and I dropped to the floor as a fucking monkey went crazy in the bedroom, flying all around, grabbing shit and throwing it at us, from the plates and cups to clothes and boxes, he was going wild in the room.
“Come on!” I grabbed the bags one at a time and tossed them out the door with the bikes.
Calhoun was crouched in a corner, terrified.
“Come on, man!” I pulled him up and we rushed out of the room while the monkey continued to go crazy.
Â
Â
“Yeah, that mess was crazy.” Images of the monkey flew in my head. I added, “Your bitch ass was shook by that monkey.”
Calhoun shoved a piece of corn bread in his mouth and said, “Yeah, whatever nigga.”
I finished up the last of my food.
“So you really don't wanna go anywhere, huh?”
“I already told you.”
“Can I hold some money then?”
“The last thing you should ever ask me for is money. You could be making your own money if you wasn't so fucking lazy.”
“Here you fucking go.”
What I was referring to was the fact that I had tried to get Calhoun a job where I worked. But his dumb ass went crazy on the interviewer, saying, “I don't give a fuck what y'all say. I'm not working on my fucking birthday and if any white muthafucka ever ask me to clean some shit up I'm gonna blow this muthafucka up!”
“Come on, Chance. That would be some racist shit if I was cleaning up for the white man. After my ancestors did it for free.”
“You have no problem doing it when you get locked up,” I reminded him. And truthfully, Calhoun was a disgrace to our ancestors.
“Whatever, man.”