Bucket Head spotted me sitting by myself on east Fayette Street by the courtyard. He threw his hazards on and jumped out the driver’s side.
“Ain’t you Gee, young boy?” he asked as he staggered over. He walked and sounded like a war vet with stiff joints. He stood about five-foot-nothing with a face made of eyes and patchy stubble.
“Yeah, Bucket, I remember you!” I said, reaching for a handshake, but he pulled me in deep for a hug—an uncomfortable one, the hugs where two people lock, exchange smells and rock back and forth and back and forth.
“You just got out?” I said.
“Five minutes ago! How you know?” Ignoring the fact he smelled like a cellblock, we both looked down at the huge DOC logo on his shirt and laughed.
“This my last time going in! I’m staying home this time, but boy, your uncle Gee sure did make jail fun back in the day! I miss him!”
Gee’s big face eclipsed the clouds as Bucket spoke, and I swear he saw it too because he let out a huge chuckle and said, “I remember when Gee had the jail on lock! We were co-dees on a shooting and sat for two years. Gee was running the jail two weeks into our bid. He had gangstas rolling his socks and folding his clothes into triangles, making him jelly sandwiches, and peeling the edges off of the bread—he’ll beat your ass if you don’t take them edges off. COs stuck heroin balloons up their asses and smuggled them in for Gee and he sold it all. He had me selling it and I even made enough to pay for my daughter’s everything, from jail! We were getting money. Gee made five thousand dollars a week in jail! No, Gee made ten thousand, actually Gee made ten thousand every time he tried to make money even if he didn’t really try. I’m telling you boy, the warden had to really, really rely on your uncle to end prison riots. Gee had that jail on lock!”
I remember when he came home from that stretch back when I was eleven. He told us that he owned that jail and showed us the cash. He gave a fist full to me and bought me a new PW50 for my birthday. That was my first dirt bike, my baby. I washed it every day, even in the winter, until my hands ashed and bled.
Gee taught me how to wheelie and how to stop traffic and how to fuck traffic up and how to never get caught. He rode a big CR250. I was too small to ride it, but he let me sit on it and told me I could be the best one day, even better than him if I tried.
Bucket Head rambled on like, “One real thing about your uncle is that he never forgot about the dudes on lockdown. Yo! After Gee came home he always sent us pictures over the jail of him wheeling bikes past a zillion people in awe. Wish I was home, man, wish I could’ve saw that, I would’ve rode too. I heard he got drunk one time and rode the bike butt naked with a mink on and some gators and some Chanel frames with the lenses poked out in the middle of the summer during a heat wave. They say he fell off and scarred his belly. I heard he popped up, did the running man and then pissed on a cop in a cop car!”
We laughed. I remembered that for sure, I told him I was right there; we rode forty bikes deep every day that summer. That’s when I honed my skills. I fell more times than him as a sober kid. He pissed on the cop car, but the cop wasn’t in there. He pissed on everything but toilet water that summer—his girlfriends, cop cars, park benches, the door at Hecht Company, the chip section at Unz Market, floral arrangements, nodding fiends…
Bucket said, “I remember he pissed a lot. He had a big heart and a little bladder or something like that. But he definitely violated parole for pissing on that cop. I remember. We were rotting in Jessup where they tried to feed us bags of white rice mixed with white roaches—weebles is what we called them. Fucking weebles.”
“It wasn’t a cop car though, Bucket,” I said. I was there, I remember. It was for assaulting a DJ at this club called The Paradise Lounge. I was fifteen, so I paid a hundred dollars to get in. Every night was ladies night. Gee wanted to hear some DMX, actually we all did. So Gee yelled, “Yo, cut some X on!” to the DJ. The DJ waved in disapproval. He was playing R. Kelly or something like that, I didn’t care—I was young and ass watching. Gee said, “Yo, cut some DMX on, where ma dawgs at! Come on!” The DJ pointed to his tag that read “DJ” and waved Gee off again.
Gee laughed, climbed to the top of the booth, pistol-slapped the DJ, ripped his DJ tag off and threw him into the crowd. Then Gee pumped DMX at the highest level; the club shook and cracked the Richter scale as he yelled, “DJ Gee in the house! Where my dawgs at!” Everyone barked just like DMX. Gee transformed the club into a kennel. The DJ slipped out the front door with a blood-leaking dome. He and the cops were out front waiting for DJ Uncle Gee when the club closed.
“You right, shorty,” said Bucket “I remember now because he sat for minute and his li’l man Bip was murdered. He was fucked up over that. I remember he stomped on a dude until his chest caved in; it took seven COs to pull him off of that kid. He did his bid in the hole and had that accident right after he came home.”
I told him that I’ll never forget that because Bip was my brother.
Bucket shouted, “RIP Bip! But nothing could stop Gee. I remember he started to tell a white man, black man, Chinese man joke and stopped in the middle to shoot somebody!”
I remembered that too because he dragged the body off into the alley, came back out and finished the joke. And that’s Gee.
Extra flashy and would shoot you in a second always yelling, “Yay Down the Hill! Yay Down the Hill!” Even tatted it on his chest. Even made into a song and sang it while waving his arms like a victory flag—stomping a kid down in Club Choices.
He stomped a coma into that kid’s future.
I dipped into my pocket and pulled out a jay. It was stuffed with buds spilling from both ends.
“If you pass that, I’m blow it with you,” said Bucket. I sparked, puffed twice, and passed.
“Can’t believe one shot took your uncle, man.”
I told him that Gee was murdered at Strawberry’s 5000. They say he threw money at some girls hanging by the bar—literally. They weren’t strippers; they were working women, probably underpaid assistant nurses or something. Everyone watched him, like they always did. Gee took his shirt off and ran around the club with two Cristal bottles. He liked to walk around drinking them like they were bottled waters. They say he bumped bouncers who were too scared to react and knocked around gangsters who knew he was an ass when drunk. No one stopped him because no one could, that was Gee being Gee. Twenty or more of his close friends and family members around and no one stopped him.
Gee knocked a kid named Chip down. Chip said, “Damn, Gee! Chill the fuck out!” They say Chip had no real beef but you couldn’t just tell Gee to chill the fuck out.
Right, right, and a strong overhand right to Chip’s nose. Heard he deflated like a broken air mattress. Stomps came next, heavy Timberland boots rained on Chip’s body.
The police rushed in and broke everything up.
They say it was over. Chip was all bloody and could barely walk to his truck, Gee called him, knife in hand: “Come here, bitch!” Chip spun around and gave Gee one chest shot in front of the cops. The ambulance stayed away just long enough for Gee to die.
“We had a little memorial for him over the jail. RIP Gee,” said Bucket, shaking his head in despair.
“Welcome home, Bucket,” I replied, giving him another dap.