We use to watch the big cars roll west on 47th Street, Lord’s sun shinin off black paint jobs, brighter than it shined against skin. We’d follow um for blocks–Southpark down to where the strip met Indiana Avenue at least. But they didn’t never stop, not for us, not even for the red lights. Just rolled on through, afraid we’d jump on the fenders and take the joyride west, I suppose. Didn’t want no ride, though, least I didn’t. Alls I wanted was for the rich men hidin behind them car windows to show they faces, to nod. Gimme my respect–that was all I wanted.
“What you doin?” Took five minutes to get that outta my mouth.
“Naw.”
“Jesus bringin them balls back for you to keep playin?”
That was what I saw him doin from the classroom window–shootin dice across the lot, down there free in the March sun–the day I decided to drop outta school and roll with Mookie for good. Ol Mister Manley stood behind his desk up front, usin his wood stick to point at words that meant not a goddamn thing, scribbled one under the other on the blackboard. My blink slowed to the heavy fade that came on whenever Manley got to dronin his gray sermons and jabbin at the wall with his stick. I looked down on Pershing Road not cause I peeked Mookie’s shadow out the corner of my eye or heard craps crackin off a wall then–just runnin from the man, like every other day. That was how come the muthafucka’d put me in the front of the classroom first off, so he could keep that ol stare fixed on me, make sure I wouldn’t get away with sleepin through lessons. His fault for sittin me close to the peephole so freedom’d keep my eyelids open no matter his hum.
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Those Low End cats stood tall over Mookie’s squat, but they was still covered in the shadow brung by my man as they gawked his roll. Shock on they faces, cause lookin down to concrete they’d found a shootin star high above. I swore they cheered like the girls in the football stands, too. Couldn’t do nothin to stop themselves, even as they dropped more dimes into Mookie’s winnin pile.
The palm his wood stick fixed on dropped, and the big-toothed girl with the mini-beehive sat up straight as a pole before answering, “Strength.”
