Wrath White - Yaccub's Curse

Little Stevie loved to go along on these trips. Almost every week someone was dumb enough to try to cheat the system and had to be dealt with. Either that or Nikky was just so high that she thought they were cheating. The result was the same. Stevie would wait in the car as one of the soldiers would jump out and break some young kids wrists or hands, or crack a bat across his knees and ribs. When Nikky was in one of her really vicious moods, she’d order one of her soldiers to retire a dealer by taking him into an alley and putting a bullet in his head and then spraying him with the Uzi sub-machine gun, unloading an entire clip into his face and torso and leaving him completely unrecognizable.

Once, Stevie asked if he could be the one to swing the bat but Nikky had refused even though her enforcers seemed amused by the idea. He didn’t bother to ask if he could use the uzi. He knew his day would come.

Stevie took good care of the runners he lorded over. Each and every one of them had brand new BMX bikes, backpacks, and beepers, and he cut them a lot of slack, even when he knew they had stolen a little cash or product as long as they didn’t get too greedy. He would simply threaten to expose them if they did it again and the idea of Nikky and her leg-breakers coming for them usually straightened them out. Then he’d alter a few receipts and make the neccessary excuses to save their asses, further indebting them to him and giving him the power of life or death over them. If they were dumb enough to have gotten strung out then he would let them resign discreetly. Conversely, any runner who disrespected him would find their receipts altered and themselves accused of stealing which often meant a death sentence.

Stevie knew that it wasn’t easy being a runner. They were the hardest working and lowest paid link in the drug chain, except perhaps the drug-addled housewives and retirees that cut the product, and they got blamed for everything. Any time a dealer got caught stealing he would invariably try to blame the lost cash or product on his runner. Stevie was often the only voice they had standing up for them, the only thing between them and Nikky.

The runners took huge risks carrying so much drugs and money through the maze of junkies, crackheads, rival dealers, and crooked nigger-hating cops. Stevie had been robbed at gun point on three separate occasions before his father finally relented and bought him gun. Afterward, Stevie considered equipping all of his runners with guns but decided against it. He had begun taking it into his own hands to retire the more incorrigible thieves and he didn’t think it was wise to even up the odds. Killing the traitors who betrayed his trust and made him look bad in the eyes of the other runners by continuing to steal, had become his secret joy. He never told his father about any of his disciplinary actions. He was afraid that the old man wouldn’t approve. Nikky suspected it, he could tell by the way she looked at him, giving him that knowing wink and satisfied grim whenever a new runner popped up to replace one of the old ones who had suddenly come up missing. As far as they were concerned, the runners were under control so they never questioned his methods. As long as the money kept flowing in, everyone was happy.

Stevie still suffered like mad from loneliness. See, he didn’t really belong here. I mean, he did and he didn’t. He had still thought of himself as an angel trying to survive in hell right up until he ate that kid’s brains. Then he began to think of himself as another devil, the worst of them though, a fuckin’ arch demon, but to everyone else, he was still just a White boy.

He looked to his small crew for friendship. The color of his skin, the flat colorless dialect he spoke in, the plain preppie-looking clothes he wore, the way he walked, swaggering like a gunslinger, all branded him as an outsider. Even the way he thought, his disinterest in girls or sports, fighting or dancing or graffiti, his inability to tell a good dirty joke, the type of music he listened to. He liked his father’s old Doors and Beatles albums instead of Run DMC, Public Enemy or Slick Rick. He didn’t even like Prince or Micheal Jackson. Dispite his ridiculous generosity these differences created a wall between him and the other runners. As long as he was paying the way, everyone would show up but when he just wanted to hang out and play video games he often found himself alone. He grew increasingly resentful as parties were planned without him ever receiving an invite or jokes were told that he wasn’t in on. He was mired in the same filth and sin as them but still he was not one of them. He was alone in the very crowd he had brought together. Often, he thought about that long ago kid who had picked on him for sounding like “Richard Pryor doing and impersonantion of a White boy” and tried to alter his voice, his mannerisms and his inflections to imitate their slang. This too was unsuccessful. He was not very good at it and it sounded as if he was making fun of them. Soon, he stopped giving a fuck. He didn’t care if he was loved as long as they feared him, and they did. They all did.

Killing a runner who had claimed to have been robbed of over six thousand dollars was how Stevie first discovered who he was.

“Ay fool! You! Come here!”

“Yo Stevie. W-what’s up?”

The kid was three inches shorter than Stevie and two years younger. He had three gold teeth in his mouth that hadn’t been there the week before and a thick gold rope around his neck. Stevie looked down at the kids feet, he was wearing a brand new pair of Jordons. Rage turned Stevie’s complexion crimson. He could feel something dark and terrible building within him. It was not an unwelcome sensation.

“Where’d you get that rope?’

“My mom bought it for me.”

“What?”

“My-my mom bought it for me.”

“Is you tryin’a play me? You think I’m a fuckin’ joke?”

“Naw, naw I swear. She did!”

Stevie pulled out the revolver his father had bought him. A .45 caliber Smith and Wesson. He held it at his side as he stepped closer to the kid and stared him in his eyes.

“Your mom’s a fuckin’ crackwhore! She ain’t buyin’ shit but rocks. You stole that money, didn’t you?”

He cocked the hammer.

“Naw, man. I-I ain’t steal nuthin’. You know I wouldn’t do that.”

He put the gun to the kid’s head.

“You about the dumbest mutherfucker I ever met. If you hadn’t tried to flash the cash in my mutherfuckin’ face, buyin’ gold chains and teeth and shit, I might have believed your stupid ass!”

“I swear! I didn’t!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Stevie pulled the trigger.

Scratch has described this to me many times and like I said, I don’t know how much of this shit is true or not, but I don’t think he was lyin’ about this part.

The kid’s head came apart. The bullet entered right above his temple, taking off the top of his skull. The kid fell at his feet and little Stevie just stood there with the gun still in his hands, watching blood and brains flop out of the top of the kid’s ruptured skull. According to Scratch, something about the way the kid’s brains just came sliding out of that big crack in his dome triggered something in him. He knelt down in the kid’s blood, completely transfixed, mesmerized, and he started scooping up handfuls of the kid’s brains and shoving them in his mouth. That’s when he finally knew who he was. That’s how Scratch put it to me. He said, “That’s when I finally knew who I was, how I fit in, what my true destiny was.” I thought he was just full of shit or crazy as fuck. I didn’t get it. I get that shit now though.

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Chapter 10

“Show them a little prospect of gain to lure them, then attack and overcome them.”