I DON’T REMEMBER THE MORNING I WAS RELEASED A year later, but I can still feel the breeze and smell the fresh air. An inmate never thinks he’ll actually leave prison. Imagine the steel door closing behind you. In that moment the noises, stench, and cold stares are whisked away by freedom breeze. Just like that, you’re on the other side of that wall. You tell yourself you’re never going back to that hell. It all seems like a bad dream that you just woke from. In reality it was a bad dream that lasted one year. I was dressed in a black Nike windbreaker jumpsuit with matching hot-pink-and-black sneakers that Hollywood bought me. I looked around. Wood was sitting in his Benz, waving me over. His right-hand man, Fatso, was parked behind in Wood’s Nissan Maxima.
“Back home, bruh! You cool?” Wood asked.
“Yeah, I’m straight, bruh. I tell you this much. That shit ain’t the place to be.”
Wood gazed at me. He didn’t have to say it. I knew he was proud of me. I didn’t make any excuses for my fall. I took it in stride. He always wanted better for me. He thought I was the one that could actually make it out without being a slave to the powder. He believed in me when I didn’t. We cruised the strip. It was the same old shit out there. Fiends were on the corners and the dope boys served them. I wasn’t sure if it was time for me to make that left at the crossroads or just get back on the corner.
We pulled up to Wood’s mother’s house. My house was still off-limits. I wasn’t surprised that no one threw some welcome-home party for me. That stuff only happens in the movies. I laugh when I see those scenes.
Most guys I was locked up with had nowhere to go upon release. They most likely ended up at a halfway house or homeless shelter. In many cases their girlfriend had already run off with the partner the ex-con broke bread with in the street. His family had moved on. Some dudes couldn’t be released until they confirmed an address to be released to. Considering that reality, I was lucky that I still had Wood.
After hanging out for some time, he asked me to go pick Keba up from school. I took the Maxima and headed out. When I’d dropped her off, there was a brawl outside the school. Things definitely hadn’t changed. Later that day I ran into one of Wood’s friends who was showing off his newest BMW convertible. It was cold as ice. I wanted to take it for a spin. It had been a while since I was behind the wheel of such a dope ride.
“Damn, bruh. Let me hold the ’vert for a minute,” I told him.
He obliged. I picked up a couple of my friends and cruised the strip. We were high-rolling for the minute. Then one of my friends jumped out and raced toward a kid he had been beefing with. A fight ensued.
Damn, here we go again.
Trouble followed me everywhere. I couldn’t shake her. I contemplated telling him to calm down because my friend was getting the best of the kid, whose uncle had now popped the trunk of his car. I thought he was reaching for a gun so I grabbed the pistol I had under the seat and unloaded. I fired a couple shots in the air to defuse the situation.
My friend jumped in and we sped off, but the kid’s uncle wasn’t finished. He came to Wood’s house later that day and confronted me.
“Oh, you think you’re a man! All right, we’ll see. I’ma treat you like a man!” he yelled.
I thought I was going to have to kill him, but he left. The next two months I just drifted. I was trying to find myself, but something strange was happening when I went to visit my probation officer. She was never there.
I was soon called into a mandatory probation hearing. Before I could even enter the room, the officer was in there burying me to the judge:
“Your Honor, he’s never showed up to my office, and he doesn’t comply with any of the requirements. He also failed his urine test.”
I tried to defend myself. “Your Honor, how can I fail a urine test if she says she’s never seen me?”
Then the district attorney dropped the bombshell. “He’s also been charged with attempted murder,” she said.
I couldn’t believe it. The kid’s uncle who came by to confront me had pressed charges that same day and I didn’t know it. The judge looked at me like I was crazy. I couldn’t blame him. I had only myself to blame. Who the hell violates their probation a couple hours after they’re released? I wish I had the good sense back then to use my mistakes as a tool to keep my anger in check. I didn’t.
I was sentenced to two and a half more years. This time around I was scarred and I didn’t give a damn. This was the last stop. I was now a twice-convicted felon, and the place I was headed made Indian River look like summer camp. The longest sentences served there was around nine years. At my new home to be, many of the inmates were serving life sentences. Picture a thousand condemned men all hemmed inside rotting walls, bursting at the seams. In state prison the older inmates with the longest sentences never caused the most trouble. The younger ones with the shortest sentences, who had the most to lose, caused all the mayhem. They usually got messed up by the ones with all the time who had nothing to lose. I was that young hothead.