Young Junius, page 4
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
He stuck his head inside and listened. Warm air came out around his face, and something inside smelled familiar: his mother’s smell, maybe the scent of the products she used to clean. He held his breath, trying to taste this smell as he listened for whatever sounds would come.
Eventually he let his air out.
“Let’s go.” Elf had already said it once, but Junius made him wait. Now Junius opened the door and entered the house. Immediately on his left was the door to the basement that no one ever locked. He sent Elf down the shaky wooden steps.
He came to know these steps well last summer when he brought Dawn over to his house to fuck in the basement. Temple had explained to him how it worked: the times he knew his mother would be home, he went down and unlocked the back door ahead of time, then took Dawn around back later and into the basement to do it on the old rugs. When they fucked like that, he had to make sure she stayed quiet. They could hear his mother walking around just above them, the floorboards creaking over their heads.
Once he forgot to check whether his mother would be doing laundry. On that occasion, hearing her open the kitchen door, he’d known immediately, pulled out, and hustled Dawn up onto her feet, so that when his mother creaked down the basement stairs they were both behind the big gas furnace, holding their breaths. Dawn was naked from the waist down, crouched beside the furnace, and Junius had just enough time to pull up his shorts.
Dawn wanted to laugh, and Junius knew if he looked at her he’d lose it, so he kept his eyes trained on the heater and the small flame that burned inside it. He listened to his mother load the washer, then add detergent and, finally, start it up. He breathed when he heard this sound, then more freely when his mother went back up the steps.
By the time the back door off the kitchen had closed, Dawn burst into giggles with her hands over her mouth and her eyes watering. Junius looked at her—her curly brown hair and long eyelashes, and below her yellow tank top her pale white legs—and he knew she was worth it. He took his shorts off again and led her back down onto the rugs.
Now he did his best to close the broken back door, found the brick they used to prop it open in the summer, and used it to prop the door shut.
As he started down the stairs, waiting a few breaths for his eyes to adjust to the dark, he thought he could hear voices from the front of his mother’s apartment. From the direction of the living room and above them, he thought he could hear the sound of a man’s voice.
A dim light showed through the small window on the side of the house, whatever moonlight and streetlight made it through the narrow gap between his mother’s house and next door. Junius led Elf past the furnace, toward the washing machines.
Above them, he could hear someone pacing—heavy footsteps creaking the wood. Some man was walking in his mother’s living room, talking to her. He heard another voice from the direction of where the couch would be. The second voice was a man’s as well, just a little bit familiar, but not one that Junius could place.
“What do we do?” Elf whispered.
Junius shook his head.
“You hear your moms?”
“No.”
Then Junius heard a soft voice. It was his mother and she sounded like she might be crying. Junius felt his blood pressure jump a notch. Someone was up there, and they were making his mother cry.
“Let’s go,” he said to Elf, heading back toward the stairs so he could get to her apartment.
Elf stopped him with a hand on his chest. “What we do? Think it’s Rock up there he be happy to see us?”
“I don’t care.”
“You want your mother to see you shot? That fix things?”
Junius clenched his teeth. He had a habit of grinding his teeth in his sleep; his mother used to stand by his bed at night, listening to the sounds and fearing what he would do to his mouth. Now, he clenched them and ground his bottom molars against the tops. He’d noticed that he did this when he was stressed.
“Fuck. If they up there with her—”
“Chill, man. We wait them out, hang here for a while. Maybe by morning they gone.”
“Morning? Yo, fuck that.”
Elf started for the rugs, maybe thinking about lying down, and Junius thought of Dawn.
He checked his watch and saw it wasn’t even midnight. Still, it was time for his mother to be in bed. He took the gun out of his waistband and felt for the button to release its clip. He wasn’t sure how many bullets he had left, but he popped the clip out and felt the round hood of the first bullet, its soft, smooth tip.
He didn’t know how many men were up there or how many bullets it would take. They’d be armed and there were at least two of them. He knew that much.
12
Junius asked himself what Temple would do.
His brother taught him to care for and look after their mother. She’d been through enough today with the funeral, Temple gone, and now someone she didn’t know keeping her up at night, making her cry. Even if Elf was right that waiting was the best move, it wasn’t a choice Junius could make. He wouldn’t sleep, rest, or sit down with his mother upstairs in pain.
He hoped they wouldn’t do anything physical to her.
In the quiet, he tried harder to hear what was being said. He heard mumbles, and then his mother said something clear: his father’s name.
Junius swore. He took a step toward Elf, who was lying on the crusty carpet that Junius wanted to tell him would be stained with so much jizz, but didn’t. Instead he kicked him.
“Get up,” he said. “That’s my moms.”
Then Elf was up. They both listened as someone above them raised his voice and yelled, “I know you going to tell me where he be!”
“Derek?” Elf asked.
Junius recognized the voice too. “That niggah.”
Then he heard another voice, a man who wasn’t his father, Derek, or Derek’s boy. It was someone older, maybe even older than Lamar, definitely a full soldier in Rock’s crew.
Junius swore again.
“Three of them?”
Junius nodded.
“What we do?”
“We get up there.” Junius started toward the back stairs, slow at first, and then faster at the back of the house. Elf moved slowly in the dark.
At the top of the stairs, Junius turned and climbed the two steps to the door that led to his mother’s kitchen. Two thoughts crossed his mind: that someone might be waiting for him on the other side, and that he’d be safer going around to the front and trying to case out what was happening through the windows.
He put his ear to the door and listened for someone in the room. Derek probably didn’t even know about the back door. And walking around to the front of the house meant he might be seen by someone watching the street. If Derek was upstairs, Ness had to be close.
Junius tried the knob. It was unlocked.
He opened the door a crack, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he peeked inside—just his head and the gun—and saw only the dark kitchen, a light across the floor of his mother’s small dining room. His mother always kept the apartment clean, took pride in the fact that she had the extra room and a nice table to set for when they had company.
This was her home, and Junius wouldn’t abide someone coming in and holding her hostage. If they wanted to find him, they were about to.
Junius showed Elf the gun, and Elf held up a small planting shovel he’d picked up in the basement. Junius shrugged.
He pushed the kitchen door open and pointed to a spot where they’d be able to see the living room. Junius moved to the spot, kneeled, and Elf came behind him, both of them low beside the table. Looking beneath it, Junius saw the backs of Derek’s legs in baggy black jeans.
In the dining room, the mourners’ food was still laid out: casseroles, store-bought trays of cold cuts with clear plastic tops, fried chicken. Junius realized he hadn’t eaten since that afternoon. His stomach grumbled.
He pointed to the set of legs and to a spot in the hall next to the living room’s other entrance. His mouth close to Elf’s ear, he whispered, “I go that way. When I move in, you go through the dining room and hit Dee from behind.”
Elf nodded.
Junius moved low and quiet, on the balls of his feet, his fingertips just brushing the floor. In the hall, he hugged the wall of the living room, then stopped and leaned against it when he reached the doorframe. On the love seat, his mother cried softly, repeating that she didn’t know where he was. He heard his father ask her to help him, and then a choking sound. The unmistakable click of a gun cocking. His mother hated guns.
The only word that flashed through Junius’s mind had four letters and was one his mother didn’t like.
He knew acting with a plan was always better, knew from the kung fu movies he watched every Saturday that the fighters who rushed in were the ones who didn’t last. But some of the heroes did rush in, took care of everything before they had time to consider a strategy. Some of the best just fought everyone they came across, took on everything in the world. Junius liked them.
The best part about these fighters was their rules, a code they had, which Junius also liked. He knew if there was anything like a set of rules for his game, it included people not fucking with somebody’s mother, especially not an older woman in a grieving state.
He shook his head as he raised the gun, leaned back into his haunches, and straightened his knees.
Then, when he heard Derek say, “Tell us old woman, or this old man gets dead,” he bolted up and around the corner into the living room.
To his left, the first thing he saw was a man who wasn’t Ness choking his father and, in the middle of the room, Derek with a .45 raised and pointed at his father’s head. From behind him, his mother cried out.
Junius aimed at Derek, but he didn’t have time to shoot before Elf came in low from behind and tackled Derek to the floor. His mother screamed for them to stop.
Derek and Elf battled on the rug for control of the .45 with Derek waving it wildly around the room until Junius stepped up and kicked it out of his hand. His mother wouldn’t want any shooting going on in her house. But then the man holding his father stood and pushed Junius over the coffee table and onto the empty couch. He was off balance after the kick, and that was part of why he went down, but also the guy who shoved him was strong. The man held his father up in front of him in a headlock and put his other hand behind the old man’s head. Aldo’s eyes went wide.
“You want me to kill this old fool? Because I pop his head off right now.” The man started to squeeze. “How about that?”
“Clarence, stop this!” his mother screamed.
Junius raised his gun to point at the man called Clarence. His father was partly in the way, but from so close it was an easy shot.
“No!” his mother cried again. She closed her eyes and crossed herself.
Clarence laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “Don’t shoot me in front of your mother, young buck.”
That was when all hell broke loose on the floor: without his gun, Derek started to fight wild against Elf. The two of them knocked over the coffee table.
Elf was on top for a moment, and then it was Derek with the upper hand. He had Elf beneath him, choking, then pounded his face into the rug. He only did it once, but that was enough to reopen Elf’s split lips.
When Junius saw that, he was the one to call out. If they got blood on his mother’s rug, that’d be as bad as killing someone. He kicked the coffee table back over and it hit Derek, giving Elf enough time to scramble away and get his hand over his mouth.
Junius sat up. He aimed the gun at Clarence.
“You don’t want that, J. Tell your son, Aldo.”
“Just do what the man says, boy. Listen to them now.”
Gail Ponds-Posey opened her eyes and hit Elf hard across the back of his head. “Boy, you get your ass off my rug if you be bleeding!” She followed the slap with a box of tissues thrown at Elf’s face. He just managed to knock it out of the air before it hit him.
Clarence laughed, still holding Junius’s father.
“Who are you?”
“I be the devil, son. The first and the last. I will fuck you up.”
“Clarence! Don’t you talk that way to my boy.” Gail Ponds-Posey stood up fast, maybe too fast, because the man she’d called Clarence shifted Aldo’s head into his other arm and shoved her back down onto her love seat. She landed with a loud huff, and Junius jumped onto his feet, crossed the room with one step, and shoved the man back into the wall, pushing the loaded gun into his face. The frame of a hanging art print broke and fell off the wall, its glass shattering onto the floor.
“No!”
Junius didn’t look at his mother this time. He met Clarence’s bloodshot, yellowed eyes. Again he found himself in a situation where the gun had put him somewhere he didn’t want to be, somewhere his choices were actions he didn’t want to take.
Clarence pushed his father down onto the rug. To Junius’s right, Derek looked like he might make a move, so Junius cocked the hammer of the nine. “Don’t push up, Dee. You just sit.”
He pushed the gun against Clarence’s temple. “You the first and the last?”
Elf went under the man’s chair and got Derek’s gun. He stood with it in one hand, a fistful of tissues held over his mouth in the other.
Junius pushed Clarence harder against the wall, lowering the gun barrel down his face to push at his lips. “Momma, I swear I don’t want this,” he said. “And I didn’t want to shoot Lamar, but he strapped and I’m strapped and—”
“Where you get a gun at?”
Junius shook his head. “The point be that now I have it things changed. Truth is, I just want sit down, eat something, go up to bed. But now we got these fools in our house, probably more outside.” He pushed Clarence down into a chair.
“You shouldn’t’ve did this,” Clarence said.
“Sure.” Junius stepped back. “I shouldn’t have did lots of shit. But I did. So now what I’m going to do?”
“You can fight like you was a man, boy.”
As soon as Clarence said it, Gail Ponds-Posey was up off the love seat fast, across the short distance to his chair, and slapped him hard across the face. “You come in my house?” she asked. “To tell my son how he should act as a man? I done lost one boy this week and I am not about to lose two.” She stood over him, pushed Junius behind her. “Now get up off my chair and get the fuck out my house!”
Clarence started up slowly. Elf still held Derek’s gun on him. “Put that gun down!” Gail Ponds-Posey yelled. “You take out those bullets and give this boy back what belongs to him.”
Elf looked over at Junius, and he shrugged, so Elf slid the clip out of the .45 and ejected the round from the chamber. He turned the gun around and set it before him on the floor.
“Come on, Dee,” Clarence said, rising. Beside him, Aldo was still getting up off the floor. “You better do what she says, now. Clear who got the pants up in this house.”
“I—” Aldo started to respond, but his wife cut him off with one wave of her hand.
“Don’t you dare think about responding to him.” She turned back to Clarence. “Don’t think I wouldn’t tell your mother all about this if she were still alive today, Clarence Williams. She be turning over in her grave at this behavior. Unbelievable.”
Clarence stood tall, his head almost a foot above Gail Ponds-Posey’s, but he kept his eyes down. “These ain’t your streets, ma’am. Things changed now.”
“That may be so, young man. But this is still my house. Do you hear me? You do not come in here and make this your street corner. Understand?”
Clarence nodded. He waited for Derek to stop and pick up his gun, then they walked toward the front door. There he turned back to the living room one last time. “We be waiting for you, junior. We there whenever you want to come outside.”
Gail Ponds-Posey pushed Clarence toward the stairs.
“Get out of my house,” she said. “And leave a grieving family to grieve!”
13
Malik had been doing fine in the towers until the unthinkable happened: the police arrested him without warning. No dreams, no insight that it was coming, Marlene just as stunned as her brother. That the case against him for conspiracy and drug trafficking dropped him in Billerica for a seven-year stretch came as even more of a surprise.
And suddenly Malik was gone. Marlene could visit him, a simple forty-minute drive out Route 2 was all it took to get to the prison, the glass between them as thin as the width of her finger when they faced each other, phones to their ears.
He was calm there. The respect he owned in the towers translated to his life inside. Enough of his people had already been arrested in a steady stream of men disappearing over the years that they populated a crew in the prison, enough of a force to see Malik got what he needed and didn’t get hurt.
So the inside wasn’t bad. When he eventually got a phone, Marlene’s visits to Billerica slowed. He controlled the towers through her, their plans concocted daily by phone.
They held 410 and 411, though Rock came at them once, twice. Malik’s men trusted Marlene, especially Seven Heaven, his second in command, his enforcer, his gun.
And for the past three years, that was how things stood: Malik, Marlene, and Seven Heaven at the top of their world, not aspiring to destroy Rock but holding on to what they had. Malik felt keeping Rock in the picture helped them, gave the appearance of competition, the sense that they didn’t control enough of the towers to invite any outside attention from gangs in Boston or the 808 crew, a group that controlled the biggest set of projects in Cambridge, the huge six-building complex along the Charles River on Memorial Drive.
But that changed when Rock brought his namesake into the game. When every fiend in the towers found he could get twenty times the blast from cocaine at a lower price, he went right for that Ready Rock, the candy that came in little vials.
