YOU HAVE TO BE ONE COLD OR DOWNRIGHT CRAZY dude to make a living robbing hustlers. It’s not like stealing from the guy working the register at 7-Eleven. Nevertheless, some had a twisted enough mental disposition to become stickup kids, like the boys from Lincoln Fields.
It’s safe to say we spent summers trying to kill one another. Lincoln Fields was the projects across the parkway, a mere three blocks away from the Beans, but judging from the amount of gunfire we exchanged, those cats might as well have been Al Qaeda. PSU projects were also around the way, but for the most part they got along with crews in the Beans.
I’m sure all of us shared common roots, but the coke tore us apart. Some days folks stayed in for fear of catching a stray bullet when we shot at one another. Shell casings littered the block. Bullet holes were everywhere. People huddled in their bathtubs with their kids when they heard the sound of gunfire. They laid on the floor and waited until the AK spent its magazine.
Being the new kids on the block made us targets, and in time the Lincoln Fields crew made a move on us.
“Y’all seen that black Impala coming round all the time?” said this one kid we paid as a lookout.
“Ain’t nothing we can’t handle, bruh,” I would say.
We kept our rifles in an old Chevy we drove around. We hadn’t graduated to the candy-painted dunks the more successful dope boys drove. A dunk is what we called a Chevy Impala or similar car. Their dunk had spinning rims with a cocaine-white interior. If a hustler was riding in a ’71, ’72, or ’73 dunk, he was doing big things. We kept our car parked on the curb in front of the dope hole with someone lounging in it in case anything went down. If so, we were ready to lock and load.
I have to give it to those Lincoln Field dudes. The first time they rolled up on us, they caught us totally off guard. I was lounging in the car bumping the radio while some dope boys were being entertained by Mr. Jingles, a smoker who had a fondness for Sammy Davis Jr. and danced like it was showtime at the Apollo. From the way he moved, Jingles could have performed on Broadway, instead of tapping his heels on Fifteenth Avenue. As Jingles moved into a new routine, a smoker started giving our lookout a hard time. I sat back and observed. I had seen the addict before. He was a regular so I didn’t pay him any mind.
“I told you don’t come around trying to sell T-shirts!” the lookout yelled. “You’re making the spot hot.”
The smoker had wheeled a shopping cart filled with old VCRs, stereos, and other junk right up onto the curb. We didn’t mind the guy getting his hustle on, but he needed to sell his junk and move on. The stuff was probably stolen, so the police were sure to come snooping around.
“Keep it moving, partna,” said Tronne, getting up from his chair under the tall ficus tree.
“Y’all ain’t the only ones trying to earn a living out here,” said the smoker. “I’ll give you this VCR for a dime hard.”
Everyone looked him up and down as if he was crazy. This dude wanted a whole dime for some rusted VCR. Crack really messes with the brain. I continued bumping my tunes. Then the smoker freaked, flipped his cart over, and started stomping up and down like a lunatic.
Our spotter reached for his pistol. “I said back up before I light your bitch ass up!” the kid screamed.
Still, I wasn’t moved. Some dealers had started stretching the dope with all kinds of chemicals so they could turn higher profits. Sherm, cush, premo, and the other drugs that resulted really had smokers bent out of shape at times. I kept bumping to Le Juan Love. Then I caught a glimpse of the shooter bearing down on us. He was running up from the alley behind Sixty-fourth Street where the vacant field separated Lincoln Fields from Fifteenth Avenue. I reached for my AK on the backseat, cocked it, then opened fire.
The first time you see death bearing down on you, time freezes. Imagine a movie stopping on a single frame, music reduced to the loud thumping of your own heart. In that pause, all of the various scenes in your life explode into an awkward twilight of pure reaction.
You do or you don’t.
Bullets ripped through the avenue. The corner-store windows shattered. People ran screaming. If that dude was going to kill me, I wanted at least one of my bullets to hit him. My life wasn’t worth shit, but he couldn’t send me to sleep untouched.
“Those niggas shooting! Someone call the police!”
I ducked on the ground beside the car as I fired. Our lookout had already sped off on his bicycle. The shooter returned fire from behind a lamppost at the intersection. The black Impala banked the corner. The shooter jumped in. My crew piled in our Chevy and gave chase up Twelfth Parkway. I leaned out the passenger-side window shooting.
They had underestimated my crew and were now just trying to get away. Dante was leaning out the back window firing as well. Tronne was busy loading his clip with one hand on the steering wheel. We chased them all the way to Seventh Avenue before we heard police sirens and bailed.
I wanted to kill them. I wanted them stuck in the ground. I wanted to inflict on them the pain I suffered on the inside. I guess that’s what psychiatrists call projection. We project onto others the issues we’re dealing with. But I had another way of coping with my demons.