“I been waitin’ for this for a minute,” he said sneering, up in Olin’s face. He stank of body odor and malt liquor. “I heard you talkin’ in yer sleep every night. Cryin’, screamin’, and sayin’ all kinds of shit. That’s when I knew you killed our brutha.”
Olin flailed and thrashed to get free. His eyes bugged and bulged. Linwood finally released his grip and Olin fell against the wall gasping for air. “What do you want from me?”
Linwood shoved him backward. “You got some fuckin’ nerve axin’ me that. How ’bout some street justice for my oldest brutha Derrick? He was the closest thing to a real father I ever had. Then he goes and dies in a fire at a home for orphans. Same one you stayed at!”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Olin responded.
“But that can of gas does,” the dealer said, taking a step toward him. “Maybe the law couldn’t prove shit, but we can.” He slid a Glock semiauto out of his waistband and raised it up to his chest in a two-handed grip.
Olin didn’t have anywhere to run. He could taste the fear in the back of his throat. He flinched and stumbled, and clumsily yanked out his own gun. He squeezed the trigger and braced himself for the blast. Nothing happened.
The dealer snickered and said: “That one don’t work. Made sure of it after we knew it was you.” He aimed again, but before he could fire, Linwood picked up a wooden board and swung it hard and wide, cracking Olin in the back of the head. He dropped like a sack of wet meat.
“Is he dead?” the big thug muttered.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here!” the dealer shouted.
Linwood threw his fist in the air and yelled, “Light this place up!”
They slopped gas on the floor around Olin, who was limp and moaning. Linwood lit a match and dropped it in the oily puddle. The dirt and sawdust smoked. The vivid yellow flames swirled and danced like arms reaching for Olin in a tender embrace. The golden-orange and radiant red flashes of blistering heat flared in a deafening blast. Olin’s gray world exploded into brilliant colors. Everything was on fire, everything was burning. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Jayson and the Liquor Store
by Larry Fondation
Imperial Highway
Jayson robbed the liquor store at gunpoint. He doesn’t know why he did it. He didn’t then and he doesn’t now. He just did it. At least that’s what he tells people. Even years later.
The gun wasn’t loaded, he says. (If he even had a gun.) But he doesn’t tell anyone anything about the gun. (Like what kind of gun.) Least of all Marta.
The cops never came. So he says.
He said he stole a car, and that the car busted an axle in the potholes before he abandoned it outside the Hawkins’s joint on Imperial, aiming to come back to the projects that, back then, we all called home. They call them “the developments” now — just to make it sound good and fancy — but we still say projects. Concrete blocks stacked upon concrete blocks forming shoebox units, with thick steel doors to resist bullets and intruders, and bars on the windows. Built as temporary housing for retuning World War II vets — but sixty-plus years later, still standing. Nickerson Gardens, Jordan Downs, Imperial Courts. Nice-sounding names. But inside the apartments are cramped spaces and the same cinder-block construction on the interior, no drywall. You can’t nail anything to the walls. No wedding pictures, but it’s mostly single mothers. No graduation pix either, but me and my brothers and sisters all dropped out of school. They weren’t teaching us jack. So, we don’t take photos of nothing. But it’d be nice to have the option.
Jayson had a story. And fifty bucks for his efforts, he claimed. The fruits of his labor. The store didn’t carry much in the way of cash. So he says.
I don’t know if Marta was impressed. She didn’t act like it. But she’s never acted impressed in any way whatsoever. Not for nobody. Beautiful, aloof Marta.
We all wanted her. We all talked but never did shit.
That’s what happens most of the time — not doing shit, meaning nothing has happened.
I remember one time we asked — “Jayson, what liquor store?”
“The one on Central Avenue.”
Like that narrowed it down.
“What one? R & R?”
That’s at Compton and 104th. It’s so close. And we would’ve heard. Word travels. And why the fuck would you steal a car to skip out on a six-minute walk? It didn’t add up.
“No, you know, the other one.”
Jayson could never prove shit. Of course not. But he just bragged and bragged. He keeps changing his story. Even now. We all know it’s just bullshit. But so what? Like the rest of us, he doesn’t think he has a real story to tell.
A lot of stuff happened. It just all happened before we were born. Or maybe when we were babies — born in 1992, right when something happened. Boiled over; blew up. Then for us, nothing happened. At least nothing much that we think is worth talking about.
I mean bad things still happen of course — murders, robberies, break-ins — we eye our best friend’s girlfriend; we argue, we fight, we want to make something happen. We start shit, we finish shit; sometimes we start shit we cannot finish. But most times we’re bored to shit, and nothing happens, nothing at all, and that’s the worst. That’s when trouble starts. Nobody knows what Jayson did or didn’t do — nobody ever will.
But back in 2009 when we were still kids, Jayson made his first play.
It just didn’t work.
Nobody got Marta. Not even Marta. She made a few commercials, got her face on the side of the bus, shilling cell phones for Cricket Wireless, some such thing. Then nada.
Jayson is in jail now — of course, not for the liquor store heist. The one that probably never happened. But recently, he got himself into tons of bad shit. He’s paying the price.
Right before he got busted, he’d asked me if I wanted to “work with him,” meaning he was offering me the opportunity to deal drugs. He said we could be partners, that he could put some money in my pocket.
“Jayson, I got a job. I make a paycheck; I got a payday.”
“Come on, man. You bag groceries at Food 4 Less. You don’t make shit.”
“I’m good, Jayson.”
“Really, brother?”
“I’m not your brother, Jayson. And I don’t want any part of your fucking bullshit.”
“My bullshit? Man, we came up together. Our mothers stayed at the same place, raised us kids in the fucking projects. Now you think you’re better than me? Why? Because you got yourself some shit-ass job and you moved out? Your whole fucking family is still here!”
“Fuck you, Jayson. You were born full of shit. Like all that ‘I robbed a liquor store’ horseshit back in the day.”
“Horseshit? I got fifty dollars that night. Just by scaring that little motherfucker. He wouldn’t even dare call the cops.”
Jayson is a big guy. No mention this time about any fucking gun.
“Still saying the same old shit. You just made that shit up to impress Marta. And she never gave a fuck about your tired ass no matter what the fuck you said.”
“I’m telling you, dude, I hit that fucking place! And Marta, man, she never gave a fuck about any of us.”
“You got that right. But you know what, I’m out of here. I’m tired of your shit, and I don’t want nothing to do with you or your goddamn schemes.”
For the last time, we went our separate ways. Haven’t seen him since. I think they got him incarcerated out in Chino. But I’m not 100 percent sure. My mother says I should look him up. I tell her I will, but I never do.