Читать книгу The Lost Treasures of R&B - Nelson George - Страница 10
ОглавлениеTHAT’S THE WAY OF THE WORLD
Rajan, fourteen years old and angry, sat on a Mother Gaston Boulevard curb holding his left leg as blood oozed out of a small gunshot wound through his jeans. He was already a vision of scarlet with his red flat-brimmed New York Yankees cap with the reflective sticker still attached, red bandanna, red hoodie, and neon-red sneakers now dotted with his own blood. His small-caliber pistol lay in the gutter next to one of his sneakers. The air stank of burnt fabric.
A kid named Z-Bo, dressed in a similar crimson costume, stood laughing. He pointed at Rajan and said, “I told you, yo, that safety wasn’t on.”
“Fuck you!” Rajan snapped. He was trying to seem hard but tears were welling in his eyes.
D walked over and stood there as Z-Bo used his cell phone to snap shots of his friend’s predicament. “You wanna bleed to death?” D asked.
“Do I look stupid?” replied Rajan.
“Wrong answer,” said D.
“Fuck you.”
D reached down, grabbed the hand Rajan had shot himself with, and pressed it onto the wound. Rajan yelped but D looked him in the eye and the kid fell silent. D took Rajan’s hat off, pulled off his bandanna and stretched it out, then wrapped it tight around the kid’s leg. “You Damu’s brother?”
“No,” Rajan answered, apparently more concerned about this question than his accidently shot leg. “He my uncle.”
“I don’t know how you’re gonna keep this from him,” D said. “But maybe your boy shouldn’t be posting pictures on Facebook.”
Rajan turned toward Z-Bo. “You posting?”
“No,” Z-Bo lied.
“Why don’t you call 911?” D said.
“What?” Z-Bo said.
“Yo,” D countered, “man up.”
“What you sayin’?” Z-Bo said.
“Call 911, fool!” Rajan shouted.
D held out his hand. “I should take the gun.”
“I paid eight hundred dollars for that gun,” Rajan said. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I know your family. My name is D Hunter. I know possessing that gun will get you in more trouble than getting shot with it.”
“He’s right, yo,” Z-Bo affirmed.
“Whatcha know anyway?” said Rajan.
A small crowd was gathering on the sidewalk now that it was clear that this gun shot was, on this day, a singular event.
D took Rajan’s gun and put it in his waist against the small of his back.
“I should take the gun,” Z-Bo said. D ignored him, as did Rajan.
D asked Rajan, “Your mom’s at work?”
“I guess . . . No, she home.”
“So you better call her.”
“No. She can’t see me in the gutter like this.”
D said, “Bet she gets here faster than EMS,” then looked at Z-Bo. “Stop talking pictures and call his moms.”
Z-Bo called, pulling Rajan’s mother away from the Kardashians’ latest drama. Rajan was getting dizzy, but the bleeding had slowed and he was moaning through the pain, which to D suggested the kid would live. D wondered if there was a reality competition show in guessing who could get to an injured ghetto child faster—NYPD, EMS, or a reality show–watching mother.
There was some blood on D’s right palm, most of it already dry. He hadn’t thought about why he’d walked over to help this stupid kid. Hadn’t he learned long ago that minding your business was the safest way to get through your day in Brownsville? But Rajan’s uncle, Damu, had done some security work when business was good and was now in the army stationed somewhere in the Middle East.
Now here D was with a bloody hand holding the pistol of a kid who’d shot himself in the leg. Rajan was lucky as hell that he hadn’t shot his own dick off. D glanced over at the onlookers and had a sobering thought: What if this kid has hep B or even C?
“Here comes your ma!” Z-Bo pointed down the block where an anxious heavyset black woman who looked to be in her early forties, in a shiny black-and-red bob and a pink sweat suit, was run-walking in their direction.
“You be good,” D said.
“You ain’t waiting?” Rajan asked.
“What for?” D said, and walked away.
Three blocks later he bent down and dropped the gun in a sewer. Then he pulled himself together and walked through the front door of Brooklyn Funeral Home & Cremation Services.
