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Good Conversation
Previously Written in 2003
“While I thought that I was learning how to live,
I have been learning how to die.”
--Leonardo da Vinci
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ONE
“I'm fucked up, man,” the boy said. In the back of his mind, he reflected on how comfort eased his soul, like the warmth of a double shot of tequila to bring him to words he wouldn’t normally say to his closest friends. The old man was not a cop; the boy could tell. Knowing someone before first words were exchanged was more than important in his line work. But young Devougn wouldn't even tell his momma everything due to lack of trust.
“Trust me, I've been there brother,” was the old man's intro to advice. It was once believed that if one could prove to have lived a life parallel to the one which one was trying to direct, it would prove that one was trustworthy. The word “brother” builds a fake bond, a mock kinship, if you will. But in these days of game-recognizing game mixed with the “I gotta get mine,” mindset, this hardly put a dent in the youth's debate.
“Oh, for real? You’ve been where I am?” The boy shook his head and leaned back, laughing in a way that seemed to say,
“Yeah, right.” He held a Black & Mild between his fingers, bringing it to his lips, but before he could inhale, his mind exhaled.
“You have been broke to the point where you gotta fuckin' jump out a fuckin' car and beat somebody over da head just to get enough for dinner?”
Looking at the boy’s fresh white on whites and his Karl Kani jeans, which totaled roughly $200, the old man knew this was a slight exaggeration. The boy was not starving. He just chose to put his life above his own people. That’s it.
Devougn smiled and shook his head again. “You old people crack me up. You don't have no idea what it's like in dese streets. I mean, shits done changed since you was comin' up. Even if you were all fucked up in these streets back in the day, you still have no idea, dog.” He leaned back. “None.”
“Maybe that's true, but if you could just consider the things I’ve told you—“
“You know what dogg? No disrespect, for real, 'cuz I 'appreciate what you tryna do 'n all, but for real—that's my word—I'ont een wanna talk about it no more. “Cuz for real, I'ont een know you like that. And honestly, youont know me.”
And that was the boy's mistake. Had he listened to reason presented in the embodiment of this old man, then he might have heard something that would have come to mind in the future. Instead, the bus arrived, and the boy got up from the bench.
As he walked to the vehicle’s door, he turned around and asked, “You ain't getting' on the bus?”
“Nope.”
“Then why you sittin' at the bus stop?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders and gave a sound that would translate to anyone of English-born tongue to, “I don't know.”
“I suppose just for a good conversation,” the old man said with a smile.
As young Devougn boarded the bus, the old man disappeared. Devougn smoothed out two crumpled dollar bills and fed them into the machine. He then fumbled through his pocket, searching for some change, and eventually pulled out two quarters, dropping them into the slot.
“Can I have a transfer?” Devougn asked.
The bus driver pressed a button, and a small card popped out. He grabbed it and made a beeline to the back of the bus, plopping down on a seat. Nothing the old man said stuck with him.
At the next stop, another boy got on with a fresh bruise on his head, a bruise that Devougn had given him not 13 hours prior. The two boys looked at each other. They both reached for their pistols at the same time. Shots were fired.
The boy with the bruise was aiming at Devougn but was surprised at the bullet hole in the center of his head. It was perfect, right between, well slightly above the eyes. He hardly heard the panicked screams of the passengers as Devougn’s lifeless body collapsed.
The bus lurched, rumbled, and swerved. The young killer looked toward the front and saw that the bus driver had been shot in the arm, causing him to lose control. The massive vehicle veered erratically, at the mercy of its surroundings. As the brakes squealed and the bus sped toward a brick wall, the young man smiled. He never imagined that this would be how it would end.
TWO
“I mean, don't you just love fucking a bitch with perky titties and a little tight sna–”
“Whoah. Whoah. Whoah. You just… Wow. You just,” the Old Man interrupted.
Roy was a brown-skinned guy with dreads. This made him look cool from a distance, but anybody with a knack for categorizing persons could tell he was a corny muthafucka.
“Fifteen is pretty young,” the old man said, feeling comfortable in his stance.
“Well, my bitch is pretty mature for her age. If she came up here you'd think she was 20-something. She's pretty damn fine, too. She has a fake ID. You've probably seen her up in a club.” The Old Man shook his head and scrunched his face with confusion. Why would a man my age be “up in a club?” He thought. And that’s when it dawned on him. Roy was one of those who had no social awareness. Most people in this category had at least a modicum of understanding when it came to the emotions and backgrounds of others, but Roy had absolutely none.
“Amazing,” the old man said, pulling out a very old notepad and scribbling something down. Roy stood with his arms crossed like he had been the length of the conversation. He was unmoved physically as well as mentally. They were almost through talking and the old man didn't say anything that Roy even took into consideration.
Meanwhile, a young man walked into the store. It was summertime, but apparently, it was never too hot to be cool. The newcomer wore a massive Avirex jacket. A belt might have kept his baggy jeans from sagging and exposing his boxers, but I’m guessing that would defeat the purpose. Perhaps the only part of him that warmed up easily was his rear.
“What up dogg?” Roy said.
The man in layers nodded with indifferent eyes. He mouthed the beginning of the word “'Sup,” but the sound didn’t travel beyond inches from his face.
“Everything in the store is 50 percent off,” Roy said to the young man who didn't acknowledge him any further. “Yeah, but, uh,” Roy was the type of person who could keep a conversation going as long as someone was standing there. It didn't matter if he started it with one person and ended it with another. “I don't think there's anything wrong with fucking a younger bitch,” he said, a little too loud, “Besides, It's not like I'm going to marry her or anything,” Another guy walked into the store. “We're just fucking,” Roy said, again, too loudly as the man that just entered headed to the back.
“Don't you think it's dangerous?
“Dangerous?”
“Yeah. I mean not everybody feels the way you do. What if somebody found out.?”
“Nah. Nobody'll find out. I told her to keep it on the down low.”
And that was Roy's mistake. It's almost as if he didn't notice that some women in this generation loved to create drama out of thin air. He overlooked how, especially in their teens, some were drawn to the thrill of unnecessary negative attention. But most importantly, Roy didn't even notice that the two men who had entered the store had disappeared.
The old man slowly pushed away from the counter, letting out a breathy sigh. “Whelp,” he growled with a stretch, “Looks like I better get goin'.”
“Alright old man. Didn't you wanna look around?”
The old man’s head panned from side to side as he took in the flashy urban wear. “Nope,” he said. “These clothes are too hip for me.
“Didn't you come in for something?”
The old man smile. “I guess, just for some good conversation,” he said, “I'll see you around buddy.”
The Old Man walked past another young man who had just entered the store. This young man approached Roy, and asked about his 15-year-old sister, LeToya. Roy didn’t deny anything except the accusation of getting her pregnant. The young man was heated. Roy remained calm. He stood there with his arms crossed as the young man hurled curse words at him. When another employee walked in, Roy asked him to watch the store while he and the young man settled things outside.
They headed to the small room in the back with the emergency exit. Opening the door, Roy saw that the other two men who had disappeared from the store earlier were back there waiting.
“Shit,” Roy said at the same time that he was hit with something, hard. He fell and his head slammed against the ground. A kick caused his brain to rattle in his skull and bleed. If he had received medical attention immediately, he might have lived, but the other employee didn't find him until a half hour later.
THREE
“So you're tellin' me you'd rather be starvin' over in Ethiopia some damn where?” Ben had had enough. He wasn't going to let one more person call him an Uncle Tom. He loved this country and was ready to die for it. Fuck the fact that he was black, he was an American goddammit!
“So many people say they hate this country, but they're still here. If you hate it so much, why don't you just leave? Aint nobody pointing a gun to your head, forcing you to stay.
“Don’t you remember what they did to us? Yeah. I remember what they did to us—No. Matter of fact, I don't, 'cuz I didn't go through it. But I'll tell you what. I would be willing to go through it if it led to the same outcome. If it meant we could get this life. America ain’t perfect but it’s better than the alternative. If ‘they’ hadn’t done what they did, we’d still be running around naked in Africa somewhere. Up in the trees with tails.”
“'Man y’all make us look bad. The angry black man standing on the corner doing nothing except complaining, talking about the white man this and the white man that. This alleged 'white mawn' ain't do shit to you. Stop sayin' they name like it's one person. It's a group of people and modern-day, right now, they don’t have anything to do with you.
You’re in charge of yourself. If you got cleaned up you could get job at McDonald's, you'd be on the right track in no time. You can’t blame the people or the country. Get on that OutKast. Get up get out and get something. How will you make it if you never even try?
“You remind me of my uncle—broke as a joke that wasn’t funny. A bum who grew up to become an older bum. At least with him, he had an excuse. His dad died when he was little so he was the man of the house at a young age. When you are worried about caring for a family of seven it’s hard to remember to take care of yourself, I guess”
“How did he die? Who? Granddad? Oh. he died when he came back from World War 2.” Ben stopped and looked away. “It was just a misunderstanding,” he said. After a long pause, he continued. “Okay, this doesn’t strengthen your point, because it was a long long time ago. But my grandad was killed for removing a Jim Crow sign from a streetcar. Something stupid. It was just a misunderstanding. The conductor shot him.”
“What? No. Well, he didn’t die right then. A police officer arrived at the scene took him and put him in the back of a cop car and then he shot him in the head.”
There is a point in every man's existence when he is completely humbled. That is when all he can remember; historical facts, opinions, situations, conversations, and even his inherited intuition are in accordance. At the same time, insecurities, habitual thinking, pride– you know, all the stuff that gets in the way of truth– all these things are melted away, just for a second. This phenomenon presents something new which is indeed the truth of that time, to him, based on everything he knows at this moment.
Ben began slowly, looking at the ground as if he had removed his shades and saw everything with the clarity in which God originally made it. “It was a different time back then. A long time ago. That was like 50 years ago.” Ben wasn’t doing a good job of convincing himself. “My momma never really talked about it. My uncle, though—he was never the same. He’s the one who told me the whole story. He probably exaggerated some. He used to say that the country my granddad served and defended didn’t do the same for him. The damn president is too busy sendin' troops over to stick their nose in another nation's business, and it's like he doesn't give a fuck about what's happenin' in his backyard. I mean, literally. Wasn't Washington the murder capital?
“When you think about it, I guess everything does relate to back then. My mom still lives in the ghetto just like her dad and his dad did. We can't get out. Each generation makes just enough to stay where they are. And it's the same with the neighbors. Everybody where I'm from has the same disadvantages, so unfortunately they rob, kill, and steal from those trapped in the cage with them. It's so fucked up. It's like when someone does aspire to be better, they are forced back into the same position.
“Reminds me of Tommy. Tommy lived up the street, he got a scholarship, and he went off to school. But the scholarship was a partial one, so he took out a shit ton of loans to fill the gap. It got to the point where he had taken out so much that they wouldn't let him borrow anymore. And he still had two years left! He went to college so he could make it out of the ghetto, and he ended up back in the ghetto and more in debt because of it, almost like he was punished for tryin' ta make something of himself, and save his people.”
Ben had to stop to shake his head.
“I dunno. I guess that's something for me to think about. Thanks, old man.”
Ben started to walk away when the old man called his name. He stopped just short of a red brick building. He turned and searched, but the old man was gone.
Just then muffled shots rang out, and Ben’s head whipped around to see a bus veering toward him. The brakes screeched as Ben froze, his brain quickly switching to his second choice. Reacting instinctively, he dodged the bus right before it crashed into a brick wall.