93

After all that ruckus, court’s not even canceled for one day. We only know that when the deputies come in loud and heavy early in the morning, still wearing their riot gear, to wake us up to go down to IPA for processing and transport. We got beat on yesterday when the deputies came back in, and we got separated, race-to-race. They pulled all the blacks out of 617. I don’t know if anybody died, but I know fools went to the hospital, and medical is so full up that they have beds in the hall. None of us know more than that. Phone calls were off-limits. No newspapers by the barbershop. It was a punishment. All of us worried about our families and our hoods with no way of finding out, so that means it’s the only thing anybody talks about. It was like a nine Richter, is what people say, but I don’t know where fools are getting that information. All I can think is that everything is fine because if it wasn’t, our asses wouldn’t be going straight back to court.

We get rolled up still in the dark-ass morning, and the only water they’ll let us drink has been boiled. There’s a giant pot of it sitting on a table with some cups for us to dip in, because I guess they’re not allowed to keep us from having water. If they could, they would. We don’t get TV in the holding room either. Some people complain about that, but none of these deputies will listen, and I wouldn’t either if I just had to bust up a riot. But there is one interesting thing. For the first time ever, they throw us in a holding room with only Raza. That means they got blacks-only in a separate room. There’s a feeling of peace about that too, and even the deputies seem surprised with how quiet we sit. Most just sleep or try to, because it’d be the first time since it popped off that it’s completely safe enough to, in a little room like that, with all your own race car around you and so much less to sweat.

Dreamer and me sit side by side but we don’t need to talk. I mean, he just says thanks to me, and gives me this look like I know what he’s thanking me for, but I tell him to shut the fuck up. I don’t need him telling anybody I didn’t want him with a blade, or that I did what I did so he wouldn’t have to. That shit is for no one to know but us, but man, I feel good knowing that he knows I got his back when it counted. When it all went down, I did something without asking him to do it, or making him. There was no other choice. I mean, with how good his side of the trial’s been going? Shit. I would’ve had to be a dark-hearted motherfucker to let him catch new charges off some riot shit, because he could be out, you know? He could fucking make it and be useful out there on the streets, and if that means I don’t? Then fuck it, man. Maybe it just means we’re even. They got me up on DRB investigations for stabbing that Muhammad motherfucker. Nada’s up for it too, but not Dreamer, which is good. I already interviewed. I said it was chaos, and I was trying to protect myself, but if one of those black fuckers that saw me do it says shit to the deputies, I’m cooling out for a long time. If they get me, they get me, that’s how I look at it. They can bring those charges. I don’t give a fuck.

We get moving pretty quick from holding. We do some squat-and-coughs and cuff up and check out for the bus. Blacks at the front, Raza at the back, a buffer of whatever Woods and Asians in the middle. We load in first to fill from the back and Dreamer’s behind me. I give him a little nod that’s like, See you when we’re through this, and this dude, the one that’s been so cold to me for the longest time, he actually nods back. Finally, you know? It’s about fucking time I got some respect. Usually, the bus would just hop on the 5 freeway, but this time we don’t. We go only on surface streets, and everybody presses faces up to windows. It’s dark as hell, some streetlights on, but not all of them, and I can make some stuff out, but we don’t really see much until we go by this one mall and someone yells out, “Oh shit!”

The roof of the Bullock’s store fell down, and it got its whole face torn off too. You can see inside the building on two floors. Mannequins just standing there. Air-conditioning ducts hang out like a giant reached in there and grabbed them out to play with and then he just got bored and threw that shit down. Outside, there’s white letters of the sign where it just says BULLO and then nothing else because it’s gone. Crazy. It all looks like something out of a movie.

It keeps being like that too. We see parking lots with multiple floors gone and crime scene yellow tape up so people won’t just wander in. On this one street, we drive through a puddle as big as the road. Everybody sits up and wonders if we’ll make it through or just stall out trying, but we do. The dude I’m chained up to, his uncle works for the city, and he says this shit happens with earthquakes. Pipes break. Flood everything in places you don’t expect. We go by this spot called the Wherehouse with all the CDs, and the whole top lip of that roof and ceiling is flat to the parking lot on one side and the rest of the building leans like it’s about to go over at any second. We go near the freeway on a side road, like, close enough, and you can see how a whole chunk of it fell down. A section bigger than a football field fell like forty feet! It’s all in bits at the bottom too, just fucking masses of rock and concrete now. We go by another bridge and see it busted in half. It’s got all these steel cords hanging out the end of it, and that’s new to me. I didn’t know there was so much metal in there, under the bridges and roads, inside them like guts. I thought it was just solid concrete, but it reminds me of what happens when you get cut and find out how much there really is underneath, holding everything up and keeping it going. I guess it takes something bad happening before you can see the reality of some things.

After we get through all that, it’s pretty normal, at least normal where we’re driving. Streetlamps work, roads are fine, and the rest of the world moves on like nothing’s different because they didn’t get touched the same way up north did, and I’m tripping on it when I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time. Words. They twist up into half lines about going through hell and seeing empty shells. I’m rusty. It’s not good yet. It might never be, but it’s something. It means I’m still here. Alive. In chains, but thinking. It’s not big, but it’s something.