Wrath White - Yaccub's Curse

—Sun Tzu, The Art Of War

“…There’ll be times… when my crimes… will seem almost unforgiveable… I give in… to sin… because I have to make this life livable…”

—Depeche Mode

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“Hey, fool! Back up off me wit’ that gat! You think that’s some kinda toy? Point the barrel at the floor ’til you ready to shoot that shit!”

“I know what the fuck I’m doin’, dog. Ain’t like this the first time we done rode on a nigga.”

Tank and I had been working for Scratch for almost four years. Dirty work. Wet work. Our job was to get bloody so he didn’t have to. We’d been doing it ever since the summer of our fourteenth birthday when we’d murdered that kid Demetrious for him. Now we were almost adults and we were the most accomplished shooters he had. Because we didn’t give a fuck. Not about ourselves or anyone else.

Four years is a long time for a shooter in the hood. Most didn’t make it six months before someone hollowed out their chest as payback for some loved one sacrificed in the name of business. Huey hadn’t joined Tank and I in our criminal venture. He should have. For a guy who wasn’t getting paid for it, it seemed like he was always poppin’ shots at someone. Usually it was for disrespecting his girl. He’d hooked up with Iesha a few years back and they were about to have a kid together. Still, Huey was always down to back us up if we needed help and we often did. We knew how he felt about us working for a white drug dealer, but he usually kept all that Black militant shit to himself. He’d given up on preaching to us years ago. Now he settled for just saving our asses instead of our souls. I couldn’t count how many times he’d pulled Tank and I out of some shit we’d gotten into while trying to pop some fool Scratch had taken a dislike to for some reason or another.

As Tank and I crept up the stairs of the main tower in the pentagon of dilapidated twelve story tenements that made up the Raymond Rosen projects, all I could think about was how I wished that Huey was there to get my back rather than his idiot brother.

“Just watch that shit.”

“I know what I’m doin’, dog. You just watch yo’ own shit. I ain’t shot yo’ ass yet have I? Give a brotha some credit!”

“This ain’t no joke, Tank. This ain’t no driveby. We up in they buildin’. In their house. On the sixth fuckin’ floor no less! It’s a long way to run if we fuck up and miss and they’ve got home court advantage. They know this place a hell of a lot better than we do.”

“If we fuck up and miss then we ain’t runnin’ nowhere. Them niggas’ll smoke our asses ’fore we hit the stairs. This shit is like cap or be capped you know I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what you sayin’.”

I closed my mouth and turned my attention back to creeping up the graffiti and urine stained stairwell. Tank and I both had our guns out and perspiration was making the grip slippery.

My problem was that I wasn’t like Tank. Tank could get his hat blown off by a bullet that passed half an inch from his skull and then sit back and talk about some trick with a fat ass he’d seen on a rap video as if nothing had happened. I would be shaken for weeks after an event like that. Tank just accepted his fate. He didn’t expect to get out of this shit alive. He knew he’d probably be dead before he was old enough to vote, but as long as he had money, clothes, and hoes while he was alive then he didn’t give a fuck about tomorrow. His life meant nothing to him and no one else’s life meant more to him than his own. Tank was a truly dangerous individual.

“Don’t get all serious now, dog. I was just fuckin’ with you about us not getting’ out of here alive. I mean, you might get capped if you miss, but I’ll be getting my fat ass out of dodge. I may not be built like a sprinter, but I’ll turn into fuckin’ Maurice Green if a motherfucker starts tryin’ to spray my ass with some hot shit.”

Tank laughed, but I found it impossible to share in his humor. My nerves were jangling as if I’d been doused in ice water and plugged into a light socket. As grateful as I was to find that the stairway had no lights in it allowing us to creep up to the sixth floor almost completely unseen in the darkness, the night was starting to feel like another obstacle. I kept wondering what else could be creeping around in the blackness.

I started to speed up, no longer concerned with stealth just anxious to get out of the darkness. Tank trundled along behind me trying to keep up and making even more noise in the attempt. I had to slow down or risk alerting the entire building to our presence. I was sure that these dealers had lookouts and informants on every floor. At least they would if they knew what the fuck they were doing.

“Damn, dog! Slow down. I was just kidding about that Maurice Green shit.”

“Sorry, playa. I just want to get this shit over with.”

“I hear you, bro. I can barely even see you it’s so dark in here.”

Finally we reached the sixth floor and stepped out of the stairwell into the hallway. It was only slightly better lit. Light from the apartments spilled out from beneath the doors, illuminating the floor as we made our way toward our target.

We were almost there.

“How many of these mutherfuckas are up in here anyway?” Tank whispered.

“There should be about five of them up in there.”

“Nigga, you said there was three!”

“Aw, don’t bitch out now.”

“I ain’t bitchin’. You know I don’t give a fuck if there was ten mutherfuckas up in there! They ain’t nothin’ but a paycheck to me.”

Yeah, I knew that, and it was damn frightening. Looking at him then it was hard to believe that I’d kicked his ass when I first met him. Now he was 6’3” 240lbs of blue black muscle and fat. His nappy cornrolls spiraled down from beneath a baseball cap with “Made In The Ghetto” emblazoned across the front of it. Red checkered boxer shorts poked out the top of his black FUBU jeans. Even though I was two inches taller than him Tank was twice as thick. He looked to me at that moment the same as he did when I’d first met him… monstrous and unstoppable.

We were halfway down the hall, just yards away from the apartment we were supposed to hit, when I looked down at Tank’s jeans and spotted a little green light flashing on and off. It took me a second to figure out what it was.

“Jesus Christ, dog! Are you trying to get us fucking killed?”

I snatched the cell phone off his hip and ripped the battery off of it. Then I shoved it back in his pocket. My heart was banging on my chest as if trying to escape.

“What?”

“What? Are you fucking retarded? What the fuck are you doing with a cell phone when we tryin’ to creep on some mutherfuckas? Fuck would have happened if that shit had gone off and them niggas came out to see who was in the hall? There goes our element of surprise.”

“My fault, dog. But you ain’t gotta get all loud. What if they had heard you ?”

“I’m still whisperin’.”

“Just barely.”

“Fool, stop tryin’ to take the blame off your ass.”

“The blame for what? Ain’t nothin’ happen. You just paranoid.”

“Just keep quiet for you get us both killed, will you? Alright, I kick the door in and start bustin’ with the Berretta. You follow with the AK and spray the whole room. Don’t leave shit breathin’ in there. Not even a fuckin’ goldfish. I don’t want nobody walkin’ out that room but us.”

Tank raised the AK then hesitated. He turned and looked at me with an expression on his face that was completely indecipherable. If I didn’t know Tank better I would have thought it was fear.