Gary Phillips - The Jook

I woke up to somebody wailing. For a second or two, I was happy, like maybe I was with some fine mama and we were doin' the nasty. But that hope soon left me as it came back to me where I was: in a stank-smelling pipe with my best friend dying beside me.

"You got to keep quiet, Nap." I tried to get my head off where it was resting against the cold concrete pipe, but there was no energy left for me to tap. It took all my juice just to get my eyes open. Nap was laying on his side, that much I could tell in the darkness.

"Oh, man, ain't this… something… we… aw, God." He rolled onto his back, holding onto himself and moaning again.

"Nap, you got to shut the fuck up." The fear that was bouncing around inside me gave my battery a charge. I crawled over to him and put my hand over his mouth. "We gonna make it, big man, we are. But you gotta be tippity-toe quiet for sure, baby." I couldn't hear much of what was happening outside up on the road except some cars moving around and that helicopter flying around. I guess that had covered up homeboy's yelling. At least I hoped so.

Nap wasn't focusing on me. As I adjusted to the darkness, I could see his pupils were tight and the whites of his eyes red like he'd been smoking a pound of dank. I wish he had 'cause the boy was getting agitated and he needed to chill. "Yo, home, you got to come to yourself, man. You got to fight through the pain." That was easy for me to say. My vest had stopped the bullet with my name on it. If I'd been tagged like Nap was, I knew good and well I'd be doing the same as him all out of my head with my guts turning to mashed peas.

Thing was, I did use the vest and it wasn't me who was torn up. You had to play the game the way the breaks went. That's what separated winners from also-rans.

"Nap," I said, leaning over. "Do you know who I am?" His eyes looked all around, and I put my hand over his mouth again, this time with more weight. If he went off there was gonna be more trouble than I could handle. ''It's me, Nap, it's Zelmont. You know where you are, right?"

He shook his head. I didn't know if it meant yes or no or it was just the shakes. But I took my hand away. He didn't yell out, he didn't do anything except breathe deep and ragged like a old locomotive.

"Zelmont, Zelmont, what have I done?"

"Wilma and your brother went to get that old croaker Burroughs, okay? But they got to wait some hours until the cops clear out of here, man." I looked at the glowing numbers on my watch. We'd been in the pipe for about an hour. A couple of rats were squeaking in the other end.

"Man," he said, worn out. Nap laid back down, barely breathing.

I opened his overalls and ripped up his T-shirt underneath. All I could see was grime and slick liquid. What did I expect? I ripped off the wrapping of one of the bundles and put the wadded brown paper over the wound. Using his and my belt I tied the makeshift gauze in place. The wound didn't seem to be bleeding too much now so maybe that would help it.

We waited. Some time passed and I considered poking out of the hole to see if the cops were still scrambling around. I worked around in my mind who could have tipped off Stadanko. It must have been Ysanya. I guess Nap's long dong wasn't enough to make her forget who really was the mack daddy in this situation.

"She didn't, you know."

He was so quiet, at first I wondered if I was losing it and hearing voices in my cabeza. "What you say, man?"

"I know you must be sure Ysanya snitched, but I don't see it that way." He seemed to be coming out of that fog he had been in before.

"Course you'd say that," I said. "She's your stuff."

"It ain't that, Zelmont." He grabbed his side and I was just about to leap on him when he waved me off. "Even if Ysanya wanted to tell him about our plan she knows she'd be dead if she did. How else could she explain what we were up to unless she copped to me and her gettin' it on?"

"Then who?" I wanted to know. Talking about it made me feel like I might walk out of this storm drain and get my shit together. Talking about it kept me from imagining that Wilma had got the best of Danny and was gonna sneak back here in the middle of the night with me and Nap conked out. Then she could pop the both of us and be off livin' large in Switzerland or some place like that. Me and Nap cold as motherfuckahs in the ground.

"Could it have been Weems?" I moved to sit against the side of the pipe again so I could stretch my legs out and they wouldn't cramp so bad.

"How would he know anything?" Nap asked.

I guess Wilma hadn't told him everything. That was good. "Forget it."

"I think it was just Stadanko being careful." Now Nap's voice sounded far away. "Remember, this run was going to have to last him, so he had to be thinking how vulnerable he was. All that money moving over all those miles…" He stopped, getting his strength. ''… from the various stops the truck had to make to collect the dough." Nap quit talking like he was used up.

"We'll find out." I listened for anything. The rats were moving around and there was water dripping back there in the deeper darkness too. It was getting cold. How long did we have to wait?

"I'm going to use some of my money to start a scholarship."

I laughed. "Now I know you must going crazy, Negro."

He moved his head from side to side. "No, man, if I get out of this I know I have to atone."

"You been watching Reverend Fred Price again, huh?"

"I'm serious as cancer, Zee. I have to make up for what I've done. That's why God let me be shot up, so I could realize what I had to do." He stopped for so long I thought he'd passed out again. But then he went on.

"Don't you remember when you were young and it was so exciting to play? How it felt to be standing in line and be picked for dodge ball or baseball? How the other kids knew from seeing us before that we had something, that extra spark, the promise of talent that made them say to themselves, 'Yeah, I have to make sure that guy is on my team'?"

"And getting to be a star in high school," I said. I didn't want to think back but couldn't help it.

"The world was ours for the asking," Nap said. "But we still played because we dug it, man, because the game was something that set us apart from the crowd. We felt good going down the field with the other guys 'cause we knew we were part of a team, part of something special."

"Yeah, you're right, Nap."

"God wants me to do better, Zee. He wants me to help make the same thing possible for some poor kids. I have no choice."

Talk of being all holy always got under my skin. And it was worse with us sitting in the dark, shivering and hungry and wounded. That's how them Christians wanted you to be, all wracked up, shit looking lost. So naturally you had to call on De Lawd to save your pathetic ass 'cause who else would come and wipe your nose in the middle of the night?

"Man, Burroughs gonna dig the slugs out of you, then shoot you up with some of his homemade happy formula. After that, you'll be thinkin' about all the pussyoh, I'm sorry, in your case,

Nap, all the poon tang and hairy bootyyou'll be gettin' with your new money."

Nap kinda coughed, trying to laugh. Then there was a pause. I did it, Zee, I killed Davida."

"You trippin'."

"She knew about me and Ysanya."

"How?" I flashed on that tape I'd seen of Davida back at Stadanko's cabin and figured he might be telling me straight.

"Pablo, of all people. He didn't mean it, of course."

"Oh, Pablo was knockin' boots with her too, Nap? I thought he only liked to be poled."

Nap coughed and laughed that time. "He does. But they were drinking together at the club one night. You know, chicks like talking to queens as if they have some special insight into the female condition. Anyway, the lad really can't hold his liquor, and he blurted out about me and Ysanya."