Young Junius, page 2
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
“Yeah, niggah,” Lamar said. “Shit be real now.” Junius could see the black O of the Glock’s barrel as Lamar raised it up. He knew Lamar’s next move.
Junius fired.
The crack of the report cut the day, and Junius jumped from the sound. Lamar spun fast, his right hand shooting up to his left shoulder.
Elf’s eyes went all disbelief and fear. He knew how much that shot had just changed.
“Yeah,” Lamar said. He started to turn back around with his Glock when Junius fired again: three fast shots. Now that it had started, there was only one way for it to end.
Only one shot hit. Junius knew he’d fired wild, but let off two more shots as he saw Lamar’s chest. The second hit him hard, knocking him back off his feet.
Derek and Ness would be coming fast now, and others too.
“Get up,” Junius yelled at Elf.
He walked up on Lamar, kicked the Glock out of his hand. With labor, Lamar wheezed and spit blood. “You dumb, dead niggah.”
“Who killed Temple?” Junius asked, holding the gun in Lamar’s face. His voice sounded distant, not his own.
“Fuck you.” Lamar reached for his gun.
Junius kicked him in the side. He pressed the gun to Lamar’s cheek and asked again, “Who killed Temple?”
“Fuck him and fuck you.”
Junius knew the next shot would kick. There was going to be blood—enough of it to bring a war.
“Get ready to run.”
Elf scrambled to his feet. “Don’t—”
Without looking down, Junius pulled the trigger one last time.
The sound was louder, and something wet hit his neck.
Junius saw it all in Elf’s eyes—more than he needed. Whether he didn’t look down that last time because he didn’t want to—because seeing death on his brother’s face was enough for one day—or because he couldn’t, Junius didn’t know.
And it didn’t matter now.
5
They ran. Without knowing if anyone was behind them or not, they ran. Give Elf the credit: short or not, the boy could go. They took off in the direction of North Cambridge, up Rindge Ave., away from Alewife, Derek and Ness, and away from the towers. They passed the cheap supermarket with drunk homeless out front, wasted in the middle of the day off cough syrup, and crossed Rindge Ave. through traffic while cars honked, Junius tucking the nine into the back of his jeans. From the front of the towers they could hear shouts and people yelling.
Into the gravel parking lot of the park, they rushed past the baseball diamond, through the outfield, and jumped the fence to the MDC. pool where mothers from the towers brought their kids to pee in the summer. It was closed now, black covers over the empty holes in the ground. They ran across the concrete to the fence on the other side and jumped it to the grass.
Junius looked back fast when he landed and saw no one coming—no chase, nothing to fear—but ran on. He turned in the direction of the neighborhoods and pushed Elf forward.
“Come on.” They ran across the high school football field of frozen mud, out of the park and to the quiet neighborhood streets on the other side from the T. Junius knew these backstreets from spending time with a girl he’d started to mess with, Adrianna, who lived a few blocks up. These were three-story, two-family houses where white people lived.
They stopped running a few blocks in, and Elf put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. He spit blood on the ground. “Damn,” he said. “This what it comes down to?”
Junius pulled Elf’s shoulder. “Come on. We got to tell Willie.”
“Fuck you, niggah.” Elf shook him off. He ran a hand across his broken lips and showed Junius the blood. “See this, yo? This my blood. We can handle that. But now? Now Lamar dead? Fuck. Look at you.”
Junius looked down and saw Lamar’s blood on his coat.
“What I’m a do? Niggah wanted to shoot us both. Now we got to tell Willie so he can be ready to deal.”
“No.” Elf shook his head. “You got to run and keep on.”
“What?”
“Serious. Get ghost. Break out and don’t never come back. Rock’s boys know you around, they gonna make serious shit for us and for Willie. They won’t stop at nothing until they done.”
“Done?”
“Yeah. Until shit be even.”
Junius’s lungs burned. He looked at the rows of quiet houses.
The idea of running to New York City came, but even that was a world so much bigger than Boston, a place he feared dealing with by himself.
“I got to talk to Willie. Shit, he gave me the gat. What he think happen?”
Elf spit again and nodded. “Niggah got a gat, he gonna clap.”
He straightened up, and they started to move again, not running, but faster than a walk. What was the point in running? If someone wanted them gone, they’d just drive to Willie and tell the man. That was what Junius didn’t like: Derek and Ness would say who killed Lamar and then—it didn’t matter who—someone from Rock’s crew would come asking, asking with guns.
They went up to Mass Ave. and crossed into Somerville. Junius felt safer here, but still like someone could come up behind them and start shooting.
“Hold up.” Elf wiped blood off his face with his T-shirt. “Yo, do I look fucked-up?”
Lamar had cut a good gash into Elf’s chin with the butt of his Glock, split both lips open. The lips were puffed out and bloody, but the gash on Elf’s chin looked worse.
“You look good,” Junius said. “This give you some character.”
“That means I look fucked-up.” Elf spit on the ground again, this time more phlegm than blood. Junius told him to press the sleeve of his sweatshirt against his chin to stop the bleeding.
“Willie ain’t gonna like this. He ask us why the fuck you did it. Why you thought you had to.”
“And what I’m a say?”
“Shit. Say you too young and dumb to know better. It’s a truth.”
Junius shrugged, rested his hands on his knees. “What if it ain’t? Say I meant to kill him? That one of us had to get fucked, I decided it was him. Plus—”
Elf waited, his breath puffing out of him in short clouds.
“Plus he was fucking with me about T. Don’t fuck with me about Temple. That shit ain’t right.”
Elf nodded and gave Junius a pound. “You right. But Willie might not like it. You know how hard Rock gonna come back.”
They both knew the answer involved every bit of a war that Willie could handle.
6
At Willie’s office in the back of Armando’s Pizza, Junius let Elf tell the story.
The nine sat unloaded on Willie’s desk, clip by its side. Willie picked it up and smelled the barrel as soon as Elf started to talk.
“This best be good,” he said.
Elf took his time filling things in, explaining about Derek and Ness more than he had to and describing in great detail how Lamar changed the situation by pulling his gun. The whole time, Willie stared at Junius, daring him to speak.
“I busted shots,” Junius said, as Elf told Willie that he squared up with Lamar. The cuts on his face told that story—more than enough said.
Willie grimaced. On either side of the desk, Omar and Jackson stood tall.
“I pulled the gat and Lamar called me out. He had the Glock so I had to dead it, right? First to deal, first to do?”
“First to die.” Willie shook his head. He shook a Kool from his pack, tapped it against the desk twice, and then raised it to his lips. Jackson leaned down with the lighter. As Willie exhaled, he sat back in his chair. “What you learn?”
“He knew who killed Temp. Said one of his boys.”
Willie nodded and took a long drag that showed his teeth. “Then it’s not all a loss.”
“But we need to go up in the towers and ask Marlene now. Right?”
“Uh uh.” Willie shook his head. He asked Omar and Jackson, “You want to visit Oracle?”
They both shook their heads like they’d rather go clean an apartment.
“Exactly,” Willie said, tilting all the way back and running his fingers up the cigarette. When he got to the top, he started to play with the lit cherry, touching and shaping it with the tips of his fingers. “You play with fire…”
Junius waited.
Jackson crossed his arms and stared at where Junius sat. It felt like Jackson looked right through him, as if all he could see was the chair. “You do this for Temp?” Jackson asked. “Cause that shit can’t be stopped now.”
“We end it when we know who did this,” Junius said.
Willie sucked his teeth. “Easy, young gun. Two things we not gonna do now is get up to Marlene or dead up this Temple shit. They took one of ours, now we took one of theirs. You did good.” He nodded. “Now it’s done.”
Elf looked at Junius out of the side of his eyes. “But they gonna come back now.”
Willie rocked in his chair as he considered his cigarette. Then he angled his head to one side. “They might. And who you think they want?”
Elf’s shoulders slumped.
Junius sat up straighter. “That’s why we go to Marlene. We ask her to Oracle this shit up and speak on Temple. She tell us what needs doing and then Rock fall into line. He can’t fight her judgment.”
Elf looked at Junius again but stayed quiet. Willie didn’t move for what seemed a long time. When he did, he looked at his boys first and then at Junius. He raised his eyebrows.
“Two things. One is how this look about Lamar. Rock’s boys come to me in peace, asking about one of they own, I got to speak on it.
“Other is if you doing this still for Teele Square, I give it to you. But this get much bigger and none of us sell shit. This ain’t about money then, if it is now.”
Junius knew the next question as sure as he knew Lamar was dead. “What you tell Rock’s crew, then? When they come ask?”
If they wanted him, Teele Square or nothing, it wouldn’t matter. Junius wouldn’t have the weight to fight back, and Willie knew it.
Willie stretched all the way forward across the desk, took a last hard drag from the cigarette, and ground it out in a glass ashtray. He let the smoke out through his nose like an angry bull, and stared Junius down.
“Only one thing I can say then. Got to say you went solo, lost it when you heard about your brother. That’s the only way I can play the hand.”
Junius could feel Omar and Jackson getting closer, looming above him. He wanted to look at Elf, but knew he couldn’t break Willie’s stare. If Willie was serious, this was his verdict; it was final. If he was kidding, waiting to see how Junius would react, to know what he’d do, he had to sit tight, hold it down while he waited for the joke to break.
It didn’t.
Willie stood up. “That’s it.” He clapped his hands off and wiped his palms on the back of his jeans.
Junius knew he still couldn’t speak, couldn’t ask Willie for a second chance or protection. This was it. He had to stand and protect himself from Rock with his own strength, go into hiding, or leave town.
Three choices and none of them good.
He picked up the nine that Willie had left on the desk and put the clip back in. “Guess I be needing this.”
7
Outside, Elf wouldn’t say anything until they were back at his house, up on the pitched roof above his and his brother’s bedroom. His younger brother was playing Nintendo, getting way too far into Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. Like they always did when they wanted to smoke a jay or get away from people, Elf and Junius climbed out the window and up the fire escape to the roof. Up here they could see over the parkway and into Arlington, to the green hills in the distance. That was if they looked north. If they looked west, they could see the projects behind the Food Master, a run-down retirement residence, and, far off, the three high-rises of the Rindge Towers.
Elf sat down heavily on the shingles and touched his chin with his wrist. Junius was surprised to see his hand come away dry; somewhere in all this, his chin had stopped bleeding.
“We should get that fixed up,” Junius said. He stayed standing, his feet on uneven parts of the roof, resting an elbow on his knee.
“I be all right.”
“That shit will scar if you don’t get stitches.”
Elf looked up with thin red eyes. It surprised Junius to think Elf might have been crying. “Shit, you think I care about my chin now? Big Willie just put us out on our own against Rock. We either stand up or get shot down.”
“I can’t—”
“How we won’t get shot down? How we don’t die in this?”
Elf spit toward the edge of the roof but didn’t make the gutter. He shook his head.
Junius crouched next to his friend, both feet on the same section of roof, his hands on his knees.
“You know I want to ask Marlene. Go up in there.”
“And you think it can happen? Think it just end there?”
“I don’t know. But there’s only one way to find out.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Elf stood up and spit a big gob off the side of the roof. “Fuck’s a matter with us. We just go up in there blazing with that nine, the one—how many bullets you got left in it? Five? Go past Rock’s boys and Marlene just up and lets us in, gives us a free pass to get out, tells us who killed your brother, and we go kill his ass too. Then it be all square. That how you see it?”
Junius stood again. He held his hands high over his head and let the cold February wind blow through his arms. He turned toward the projects and the towers and took a deep breath.
Even without stretching, he was taller than Elf. He had the strength to hold his own against anyone in his grade, all but a few of the eleventh-graders. He liked school, too. Liked the idea of playing football next year if he could keep his grades up and didn’t miss class; he had even made some Bs to keep his mom happy.
His mom, the woman he hadn’t seen since his brother’s funeral that morning, the woman who wailed and sobbed the whole way through the ceremony.
No way he’d give his mother another body to mourn.
“Fuck,” he said. “I don’t see it any other way. I’m not crazy, and I don’t want die. I’m just saying all this other shit has to go. It’s what I have to do. You right: We stop now and Rock get to us. We keep going, maybe we get left alone.”
“Or Willie let us back in out of respect.”
“True.”
Elf pulled a jay out of his coat. “How we go up is how we come down. You can’t go into the towers and make all that. How that happen?”
He put the whole jay in his mouth like he wanted to hide it there, then brought it out slow between pursed lips, making sure it wasn’t too dry.
He cupped one hand around it and flicked the lighter a few times. He got the flame to last only as far as the joint, if that far, and then turned to Junius. “Give a hand?”
Junius cupped both hands around the jay. This time Elf brought the flame to its tip and inhaled, took a few quick puffs.
“Thanks.”
He nodded with his mouth full, his cheeks puffed out, and held the j into the wind, let the breeze carry off a stray ash. When he exhaled again, he took a deeper toke and a longer inhale, pushed the smoke down into his lungs.
He held it out to Junius, and Junius shook his head. “I’m cool.”
Elf’s eyes narrowed. He let out the smoke. “Niggah, you not gonna hit this?”
“I got to stay clear in my head now. This big.”
“Just chill. Sit back and lounge. Nothing going anywhere while we up here.”
Facing out over the rooftops, Junius knew it wouldn’t last, that he was going to have to act.
“Let me ask you,” Elf said. “What made you come back? Why you didn’t just get up in them towers when we was there? Why you fuck with Lamar again?”
Junius closed his eyes, pictured the scene with Lamar standing over Elf, going for his Glock.
“Had to,” he said.
Elf took another hit, swallowed as much as he could, and sat back to hold it in his lungs. He shook his head as he held it, Junius waiting.
“Nah,” he finally let out the smoke in a gasp. “I can’t let you do this on your own. Hit this jay and then we figure out where we sleep tonight.”
“Bullshit.” Terrence was on the phone when Junius and Elf came in off the roof. “Nah, niggah. You can’t be serious. I’m looking at him right now.”
“Bitch,” Elf said. “Hang up that phone.” His brother looked at him with slow eyes like he was watching TV. “Now!” Elf leaped across the room and hung up the phone by hitting the cradle. “Fuck you talking about, niggah?”
Junius took a step back toward the window. The fact that even high Elf could move like that, snap on his brother so fast, stunned him.
“I—”
“Who you talking to?” Elf grabbed his younger brother by the face, squeezing his cheeks together. His brother beat at his arm with the phone handset, but Elf didn’t stop. “What you talking to them about?”
Terrence tried to talk, but his words came out smush-face. Elf let him go. “Speak!”
“I was talking to Ramon. He say your boy shot Lamar.” Terrence looked at Junius with an expression somewhere between fear and awe. “You did that?” he asked.
“Fuck,” Elf said. “Course he didn’t kill nobody. You crazy?” He smacked his brother across the temple for good measure. “How you tell people that shit?”
Junius didn’t know what to say. Suddenly he felt like he was the one who’d gotten stoned on the roof.
Elf looked over at Junius. “Don’t matter what you didn’t do, now. This fuck told somebody your ass up in here, then this be where we can’t stay.”
“What? I—” Elf’s brother stammered.
“Who Ramon know?” Elf asked him. “Who told his ass that Junius did something? Huh?”
Terrence shook his head.
“Exactly. Right now he telling someone else that J here, and somebody getting ready to come find us.”
