So there was this kid right. Kinda small for his age, so naturally we used to call him Shorty. His brother and mine used to hang back in the day. So it come only natural that this young ‘un come sling it with me and my crew when we hit high school. Now Shorty used to get all kinds of teasing directed his way, on account of his small stature and the fact he looked like a sledgehammer done a good number on his face. Word is, Shorty’s mom’s had a boyfriend once who went at him once when he was high on tha product. Shorty don’t ever talk about it, and us kids being raised on the street, don’t ever ask. Compassion don’t come easy on the corner. Here it’s every nigga for hisself and you looking for shit if you start showing a soft spot for the weak ones.
None of us liked Shorty much at first. That nigga was weak. In fact, my crew and I done gave him a hard time every time he tried to work himself into our outfit. We stole his lunch damn near every day and made him do every oddjob we could find. Coolio and DJ used him as lookout while they went ‘bout their dirty business in the ‘hood and even Prez, who only fronted like he was mean, never missed an opportunity to take a swipe at him.But Shorty never once complained. He just stood there and took it and looked at us with his sad,doleful, puppy dog eyes. Fellas used to joke bout how he was a Timex.He’d take a licking and keep on ticking. That boy had heart, I’ll tell ya. There was the time that Mean Pete and his boys killed Shorty’s li’l rabbit. No provocation, they just did it to watch a live thing die. And they took their time about it too. When Shorty found Bunnie, she had all these little cuts and burns on her, like they’d tortured her. Real concentration camp shit. Shorty took it real calm. And we all knew he loved that rabbit like it was family or sum’n. When DT found out, he was furious. Now Shorty is a weak-ass nigga. In tha hood, that’s recipe enough for inviting brothas to start banging you up. But he our weak-ass nigga. If anyone should be leaning on him, it should be us. Aint no call for Mean Pete to go all Josef Mengle on his rabbit when we got the market cornered on that shit. So DJ and Coolio and I sneaked up to Mean Pete’s crib while his moms was out and set fire to that mothafucka. I remember we stood and watched that house burn for a good fifteen minutes. Nobody saying nothing, just standing there watching. And after a while, it starts to rain and the fire kinda gets doused, but the house is gutted by now, so it’s all good. When we walk away in the rain like homecoming heroes from a war, there’s just a ghost of a smile playing on Shorty’s lips. DT and I slap him across the back. The nigga’s an initiate now. Welcome to the club Shorty. We got your back.
Mean Pete had mad enemies and rivals in the coke slinging business, so blame was naturally attributed to other quarters. My crew and I lived to see more daylight. School dragged on. DJ and Coolio never did attend, joining the street crews working the corners, selling drugs to all takers. They had uncles high up in the drug trade, who wanted them to get a real grounding in the workings of the family business. From the ground up. So school wasn’t no option. Prez was into all that black pride bullshit and he had a way with words. Damn, that nigga had words on him that would make a thesaurus proud. Aint none of us could see it coming, but prez was headed for the bar. A nigga lawyer, like Johnny Cochran. That boy sure made us proud. As for me, I grew out of the stupid machoism, got my inflated head out my tight ass and realized that if I kept on the way I did, I’d be dead or counting down jail time in five years flat. So I cleaned up my act and got out the game. For good. I didn’t see myself working for the man and I wasn’t gonna lay down and take orders from nobody at no McDonalds. So I borrowed some dough off DJ and Coolio and started me up a gym. It was slow going at first, but with a good marketing angle and some hard work, word got round and I got me a regular procession of niggas comin to lift weights. Shit, I become a regular citizen. I even paid taxes, a far cry from those crazy days when we used to sling rocks at windows, graffiti the walls with cuss words and rob old women of their pension money.
As for Shorty, I’d have liked to say be buried his nose in this books and found out he had a real aptitude for math and become a scientist or some such shit. But real life don’t play that way man. Shorty remained a stupid nigga and when school was over, he found himself inadequately equipped to deal. He started a nine-to-five at the local department store, but Shorty was so unlucky his store got robbed thrice in the first two weeks. Shorty was accused of partnering with the thieves and fired. He then bounced around some, doing oddjobs on the street for grub and room. My old crew would help him whenever he came round, giving him dough or some work. But Shorty invariably fucked up what jobs we gave him and managed to lose or spend his money so fast you’d think he was one of them Hilton sisters. We grew tired of him mooching off us and all of us told him at some point, to fuck off. Shorty took it quietly. He didn’t come by for a month after I kicked him out. But one winter morning, he was back again on the steps of my porch asking for money to get high. In a month’s time, he’d become an addict. Slim Charles’ crew had given him a job as lookout and convinced him to accept product instead of cash. Before you knew it, Shorty was a dope fiend with a dangerous and expensive addiction he could not afford. I told him in no uncertain terms what a fuck-up he was and kicked him the fuck off my property. Looking back, I might have been a little harsh on the kid, but whatever man.Tough love. You start pitying a nigga who’s an addict, he gon start exploiting that pity. Later I learned that DJ and Coolio had more or less done the same to him. Prez, being the sentimental sap he is gave him some dough and Shorty kept going back to him once in a while. Prez always was the soft one. That was the last I seen of Shorty. Word around town said he became Slim Charles’ bitch, doing all kinds of dirty work for him; sexual favors, burying the dead, all kinds of nasty shit. Shorty didn’t have a crew no more, so he took it lying down. Boy was a natural pushover,so aint nothing no-one could do. Man that don’t respect his own self can’t expect no respect. Still and all, I guess we shoulda done something. But DJ and Coolio were busy climbing the drug hierarchy and I was busy with my gym. Prez gave him dough and between the four of us, we rationalized and made excuses so we could sleep at night. Prez once told us over some drinks that inaction equals complicity. That means standing by and watching injustice is as good as doing bad shit yourself. And if that were true, then us lot were guiltier than sin. But the years rolled by and when word bout Shorty’s latest misadventure occasionally got to us, we’d sigh and toast our next drink to him and get on with our lives.
So when we heard what finally happened to Shorty, it hit us hard yo. I mean, we had given up on the boy and all, but still, he used to be one of us back in the day. And when I heard bout the manner of his exit from public life, I coulda just about crawled up and died. Turned out Shorty’d turned to gay prostitution to finance his habit. His customer that day liked to play dirty. Police officials deduced he beat Shorty real good and even brought a gun into the game to get his rocks off. They figured this out from accounts of the hookers in the adjoining room. At some point Shorty snapped. He snatched the gun and shot the guy twice, once in the crotch and once in the chest. Shorty then goes back to his old haunts down at the drug corner and shoots up Slim Charles and the rest of his gang. He’s got seven niggas chalked up and one in critical and all of them sure had it coming. That’s the last anyone’s ever seen of Shorty. It might be he hightailed it to the coast and got on one of them ships headed for Europe. But knowing Shorty he most likely dragged himself to a deserted corner and put one in his own head. Its been a week and counting. No body found yet. Slim Charles’ corner got re-equipped with a new crew today. They rolling out product at discount prices in honor of the dead.
That’s how they do in this town. Life goes on yo.
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