“The fuck that mean?” I frowned, balling my free fist.
“As I stated, dummy. Get on.” He waved me off with his loaded gun.
I stood there in a stare-off with Rosco, I imagined having a gun and smoking him right where he sat but questioned my own abilities. If I did have a gun, would I smoke Rosco? Could I actually kill a man in cold blood like Pops did on a regular? I shrugged the weird moment off just like I shrugged off the possibility of Pops letting a crack head top him off in the back. I walked back through the front door wishing like hell, Pops paranoid ass didn’t board up the back door and windows to the trap house. He made sure it was almost impossible to break into his trap houses since he got robbed once by a bunch of crackheads.
By the time I stepped out on the porch, it was raining. The sky looked ugly and gray matching my mood. I walked past the dried up, front lawn then back through the alley way that led to the back of the house, holding my breath not wanting to inhale the funk mixed with heavy drops of rain. The fiend that I stepped over when I first walked through the alley was gone. Maybe he went for shelter since it’s raining, I thought with an eerie feeling that was hard to ignore. My stomach twisted up as I walked past the bob wired fence then—froze. The crack head who offered Pops head was no longer in sight and Pops was laid out in front of his chair with blood decorating the front of his shirt. What the fuck happened? My heart rate tripled in speed.
I dropped the drugs and ran to Pops, then dropped down to his side and started inspecting him. His eyes were wide andpopped out the sockets. He grabbed at my hoodie and pulled me to him weakly.
“K-Kenny…” He choked; blood spilled out his mouth as I frantically looked down trying to see the damage with shaking hands.
“Pops, please stop moving. What happened?” I nearly choked over my words in panic.
It wasn’t a bullet; he was stabbed in the stomach, multiple times.
My heart kicked violently against my ribs, I didn’t want him to bleed out, I couldn’t imagine him dying on me.
“They gone try to take it all from you Kenric.” He rasped; voice strangled.
“The blocks, money, our name—you gotta be stronger than me, feel it?”
I nodded once swallowing down every part of me that wanted to be weak right now. I wanted to cry; the rain made it almost unbearable to hold it all in.
“Take the board.”
He always spoke of a board…his board. The board that he used to manipulate the streets until it became his main bitch that he pimped out on a regular. Most of his men hated him, they looked at pops like a powerful junkie that couldn’t be beaten. Kendrick Mastiff’s veins were full of poison, but his mind was sharper than a broken bottle.
I watched him since I was born, I also watched grown men sweat bullets just from hearing his name. Pops wasn’t big in size, but he was the kind of big that silenced a room just by standing in it and breathing.
In Pops eyes I lived two lives, one was learning the streets from him, and the other was in my self-made ran down lab. It was my escape, something that made me feel like the kid that I always wanted to be. I had fun creating different things andI also had high hopes of creating something for the community that could save people. Especially from drugs.
I saw it firsthand from Pops, I wanted to save him but was too young for him to take direction from. If I spoke about all my aspirations and the things that I dreamed of to him, he’d think it was too far-fetched. Then my sweet and beautiful mother, Josephine, was far gone but I never lost my faith in saving her. I felt in my young heart that I would one day be somebody, I just didn’t know who.
“Go get bitch ass, Rosco. I want y’all to drag me to my room and let me get high.” He coughed up blood and closed his eyes for a couple of seconds.
“You can’t do that!” I yelled at him in disbelief.
“The board is yours now Kenny! Remember, the closest to you will be the ones to take you out. I’m too much of a real man to let a pussy peasant try me. Take me to my room, go get that bitch—I-” Pops coughed and shook his head from side to side like he was in denial that his time was near.
The back door opened, and it all made sense suddenly, at first, I didn’t know what I walked up on with Pops and didn’t understand how fast he was attacked. Rosco stood at the back door with a blank look on his face. He tucked his gun in the small of his back and moved at his own pace like he’d already heard what Pops had said. He planned this shit! He set pops up! The boards to the back door were removed and that in itself wasn’t an easy task. He had to have removed them little by little for the perfect time to make a move on Pops. That crack head bitch was a part of the plan, and it all worked out in Rosco’s favor.
“Don’t just look stupid dummy, help me get this fool inside.” Rosco smirked at me.
He always looked at me like I wasn’t worth the acknowledgement. He had a look of victory behind his icy eyes.I didn’t know why I felt a sudden shift that made me feel like I was going to lose my bowels soon. I looked down and spotted a rose crimson glass pipe that was next to Pops, which would usually be in his hand with no shame. The crack was never a problem for him. I done seen him geeked up and still outsmart a room full of dope boys. He’d count money fast as hell higher than giraffe pussy and if one of his men came up a cent short it was over for them.
“The board! Kenric!” Pops wide eyes misted over momentarily before turning back cold.
I didn’t know what the fuck that meant. I just knew he was dying and there was nobody here besides Rosco to assist me. Rosco had his next moves planned out, I needed to think quickly to save my father and myself. Swallowing down my fear was a hard task. I watched Rosco go to work, as he grabbed Pops by his shoulders gripping each side of his cotton tee. He dragged him like he was weightless without my help. I stood up and felt like I was in a fucking movie. Each footstep was heavier than the next as I walked through the back door following the blood that led towards Pops room.
Rosco laid Pops on the floor on his side, then handed him a glass pipe already stuffed with crack. Pops weakly took the lighter from Rosco with blood still spilling from his gut and lit it.
“I’m gone get a first aid kit, talk with your Pops before I get back. I told you to tell him to lay low.” He chuckled dryly and walked away. His steel toe boots stomped out of the room leaving the door wide open.
Pops coughed violently, as the sound of his lighter going on and off as he inhaled as much of the poison as he could, pained me. The stench of crack almost suffocated me; I could never bring myself to watch so I turned towards the window andgazed out of it trying to figure out something since Rosco was still playing a fraud ass role. What was next?
I looked out the window and that’s when my eyes landed on an owl perched on a busted streetlight. Its feathers ruffled in the breeze; its head tilted like it was listening to my father’s last breaths. White face, black eyes, staring through the cracked glass at me like it already fuckin’ knew me. Like it was waiting to see if I was gonna fold. Owlette… I looked at it for a minute too long. I thought back to the potent lab flower that I created and studied. It was beautiful and as white as the cocaine bricks my Pops distributed from city to city.
My Pops started shaking, coughing up blood all over his lips. I ran to his side and eyed the glass pipe next to him. Kneeling down, I listened to him mumble prayers to a God he never believed in until the reaper came knocking. What the fuck is really going on? I asked myself over and over because something wasn’t right. Pops was hurt and out of his mind. The shift that I felt turning my stomach inside out was inevitable. It felt like my world was spinning out of control until a calm came over me.
