I know she’s been seeing somebody.
I don’t ask for details and Gutta knows better than to give them to me without being asked. Some things you’re better off not knowing the specifics of. You just know about it, you carry that and you keep moving because stopping isn’t an option when you have twenty eight fights worth of momentum behind you and a world title in front of you.
Tonight I have a fight and that’s all that I could afford to be worried about.
I get up off the locker room bench and roll my neck and feel it crack in two places the way it always has before a fight. I look at myself in the mirror across from me.
Twenty six years old. Twenty eight and zero. A long way from that Shell gas station on MLK and that basement on the south side and that alley outside my building where three men put a gun to my head and told me I had seven days.
A long way from the boy who stood in a parking lot at five years old and watched his father die and felt the whole world keep moving like it didn’t matter.
I’m still standing.
I’m still here.
And tonight I’m about to remind everybody in that arena exactly who Xavier Hendrix Jr. is. In my head, I kept hearing the name BJ.That’s the person who’s sent the hit on my father. I was about to use that to win tonight’s fight. Soon, I was gonna figure out who the fuck this BJ nigga was. And if he wasn’t already dead, I would make sure that soon enough, he will be.
The fight was over, and I’d done it once again. This shit had become second nature, but I wouldn’t allow myself to get too comfortable. The referee grabbed my wrist and raised it, then the arena went up like the roof was coming off and I stood there in the middle of that ring under those lights and let it wash over me for about ten seconds.
Third round. Technical knockout. Darius Kemp, ranked number four in the WBC heavyweight division. He had just been stopped by Xavier Hendrix Jr. in front of twelve thousand people at the American Airlines Center and the commentators were already losing their minds on the broadcast that was going out to everybody watching at home.
The ring announcer got on the mic and I heard my name, my record and the words mandatory challenger. At that moment, the crowd went even louder. Gutta was through the ropes andhad both arms around me, Coach Ray was right behind him and for a minute it was everything.
Everything I had worked four years for standing right here in this moment under these lights with my hand raised and the biggest fight of my career officially on the horizon.
Then Gutta pulled back and looked at me.
And I knew. I knew something had to be wrong.
I had been reading Gutta my whole life and the look on his face right now had nothing to do with what was happening in this arena. His eyes were doing something that they only did when something had gone sideways.
He leaned in close so only I could hear him over the noise.
“It’s Mazi,” he said. “He got shot. I got the call.”
Everything in the arena went distant. Like somebody turned the volume down on the whole building and all I could hear was those three words sitting in my chest.
“How bad,” I said.
“I don’t know yet. We need to go tho.”Gutta paused and that pause was the part that scared me more than anything else he had said. “He was outside the Eastside Locos trap on Morrell when it happened.”
I stepped back from him and looked at his face and made sure I had heard that right.
I had heard it right. What the fuck was my baby brother doing outside a damn trap spot? They were home on summer break as since they were grown ass men, who were now officially seniors in college, I didn’t feel like I needed to watch them like that. I guess I was wrong. All that I could do was pray that God spared my brother.
I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t do the post fight interview that the broadcast team was already moving toward me to get. I didn’t stop for the cameras or the people reaching over the ropes trying to touch me or any of it. I ducked through the ropes and grabbed my phone from Coach Ray’s jacket pocket where I always left it before a fight and I walked straight toward the locker room tunnel with Gutta right behind me.
Coach Ray called after me and I heard him and kept walking. I needed to get to my brother, now.
—
I didn’t change clothes.
I left the arena and drove to Baylor University Medical Center in my fight shorts and my ring shoes with my hands still wrapped. I had a cut above my left eye from the fourth round that the cutman had closed up but that was already threatening to open again. I didn’t feel any of it. I was somewhere past feeling physical things right now. I was worried about my damn brother. And where the fuck was Melo? I couldn’t get him on the phone.
The whole drive I kept running it through my head and couldn’t make it make sense no matter how many times I tried. Mazi. My little brother. The one I had been putting money away for since he was in high school to make sure he never had to touch the streets. If he wasn’t there buying dope, then the nigga was definitely selling it!
The one with NFL scouts at his games and a future that was already being written for him by people with money, clipboards and serious intentions. That same Mazi. Outside a trap house on the east side in the middle of summer getting his stupid ass shot.This shit didn’t make sense no matter how much I tried to get it to.
